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The 

Battle of Principles 



A Study of the Heroism 
and Eloquence of the 
Anti - Slavery Conflict 



By 
NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, D. D. 




New York Chicago Toronto 
Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 19 1 2, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



-/ 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 12s North Wabash Ave. 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 



6C1.A312:>:)5 



Foreword 

I'^HESE are days of destiny for the people 
of the Eepublic. Democracy, like a 
beautiful civilization, is sweeping over all the 
earth. From Portugal comes the news of a 
monarchy that is taking on democratic forms. 
Turkey has announced the liberty of the 
printing press, Russia is planning a new sys- 
tem of popular education, China is in process 
of adopting a constitutional government, 
with a cabinet responsible to the people. Un- 
less one reads the newspapers in many lan- 
guages, the observer will miss daily some new 
victory for democracy. Great changes are 
on also for the Republic. Now that the Ci\dl 
War is fifty years away, the new ISTorth and 
the new South represent a solid nation. In- 
deed, if every Northern soldier were to die to- 
day, not one interest or liberty of this Republic 
would be permitted to suffer by the sons of 
the Confederate soldiers, who would defend 
the nation unto blood as bravely as men born 
north of Mason and Dixon's line — indeed, 
who fought gallantly for it in the Cuban 
5 



Foreword 

war. The North has entered upon a new 
industrial epoch, but the South also is in the 
midst of its greatest industrial movement, 
and in sight of its enlargement, by reason of 
the Panama Canal. 

The Western Continent is not large, but it 
holds more than half the farm land of the 
planet, and it is already evident that the 
United States and Canada, with their free in- 
stitutions, will indirectly and directly control 
the thousand millions of people that will soon 
live between the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, 
and Cape Horn. The one question of the 
hour is how to make all the coming mil- 
lions patriots towards their country, scholars 
towards the intellect, obedient citizens towards 
the laws of nature and God. Our national 
peril is Mammonism, and the sordid pursuit of 
gold. Our fathers came hither in pursuit of 
God and liberty, — not gold and territory. 
Sixty of our present ninety millions of people 
have entered the earthly scene since the 
Civil War. Our young men and women, and 
the children of foreign born peoples need to 
open the pages of history, setting forth the 
great men and events of the Anti-Slavery 
epoch in this land. 

The time has come for the teachers in the 
6 



Foreword 

schoolroom and the preachers in then* pul- 
pits to assemble the youth of the nation, and 
drill them in the history of industrial de- 
mocracy, and of political liberty. If our 
youth are to make the twentieth century 
glorious, they must realize the continuity of 
our institutions, and often return to the nine- 
teenth century and the Anti-Slavery epoch. 
The phrase, " For God, home and native 
land," is often on the lips of our teachers. 
Love towards God gives religion ; the love of 
home gives marriage ; the love of country, 
patriotism. But patriotism is a fire that 
must be fed Tvith the fuel of ideas. These 
chapters are written in the belief that the 
youth of to-day will find in the history of their 
fathers a storehouse filled with seed for a 
world sowing, an armoury filled with weapons 
for to-morrow's battle, a library rich with 
wisdom for the morrow^'s emergency, a cathe- 
dral, bright with memorials of yesterday's 
heroes, its soldiers and scholars, its statesmen, 
and above all, its martyred President. 

Newell Dwight Hillis. 

Plymouth Church, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 



Contents 

I. Rise of American Slavery : Growth of 

the Traffic . . . . 1 1 

II. Webster and Calhoun : The Battle Line 

in Array ..... 40 

III. Garrison and Phillips : Anti-Slavery 

Agitation ..... 68 

IV. Charles Sumner : The Appeal to Edu- 

cated Men . . . -95 

V. Horace Greeley : The Appeal to the 

Common People . . • 1^7 

VI. Harriet Beechcr Stowe ; John Brown : 

The Conflict Precipitated . .136 

VII. Lincoln and Douglas : Influence of the 

Great Debate . . . .160 

VIII. Reasons for Secession : Southern Lead- 

ers . . . . . .188 

IX. Henry Ward Beecher : The Appeal to 

England . . . . .212 

X. Heroes of Battle: American Soldiers 

and Sailors .... 242 

XI. The Life of the People at Home Who 

Supported the Soldiers at the Front 263 

XII. Abraham Lincoln : The Martyred Presi- 

dent 288 

Index 327 



KISE OF AMERICAN SLAVERY: 
GROWTH OF THE TRAFFIC 

THE history of the nineteenth century- 
holds some ten wars that disturbed the 
nations of the earth, but perhaps our Civil 
War alone can be fully justified at the bar of 
intellect and conscience. That war was 
fought, not in the interest of territory or 
of national honour, — it was fought by the 
white race for the enfranchisement of the 
black race, and to show that a democratic 
government, conceived in liberty, and dedi- 
cated to the proposition that all men are 
created equal, could permanently endure. 

In retrospect, the Great Rebellion seems 
the mightiest battle and the most glorious 
victory in the annals of time. The battle- 
field was a thousand miles in length ; the com- 
batants numbered two million men ; the strug- 
gle was protracted over four years ; the hill- 
sides of the whole South were made billowy 
with the country's dead ; a million men were 
killed or wounded in the two thousand two 
II 



Rise of American Slave 



ry 



hundred battles; thousands of gifted boys 
who might have permanently enriched the 
North and South alike, through literature, 
art or science, were cut off as unfulfilled proph- 
ecies in the beginning of their career, and 
what is more pathetic, another million 
women, desolate and widowed, remained to 
look with altered eyes upon an altered world, 
while alone they walked their Yia Dolorosa. 
In the physical realm the black shadow of 
the sun's eclipse remams but for a few min- 
utes, but through four awful years the nation 
dwelt in blackness and dreadful night, while 
fifty more years passed, and the shadow has 
not yet disappeared fully from the land. 

Strictly speaking, the Civil War began 
with the debate between Daniel Webster and 
Calhoun in 1830. These intellectual giants 
set the battle lines in array in the halls of 
the Senate. The warfare that began with 
arguments in Congress was soon transferred 
to the lyceum and lecture hall, then to the 
pulpit and press, then to the assembly rooms 
of State legislatures, until finally it was 
submitted to the soldiers. At last Grant, 
Sherman and Thomas witnessed to the truth 
of Webster's argument, that the Union is one 
and inseparable, that it should endure now 

12 



Growth of the Traffic 

and forever, but the endorsement ^vas \rritten 
with the sword's point, and in letters of 
blood. The conflict raged, therefore, for 
thirty-five years, and some of the most des- 
perate battles were fought not with guns and 
cannon, but with arguments, in the presence of 
assembled thousands, who listened to the in- 
tellectual attack and defense. In their fa- 
mous debate, Lincoln and Douglas were over 
against one another like two fortresses, bris- 
tling with bayonets, and with cannon shotted 
to the muzzle. 

The many millions of people in the United 
States, born or immigrated here since the 
Civil War, busied with many things during 
this rich, complex and prosperous era, have 
suffered a grievous loss, through the weak- 
ening of their patriotism. Multitudes have 
forgotten that with great price their fathers 
bought our industrial liberty for white and 
black alike. The study of no era, perhaps, 
is so rewarding to the youth of the country 
as the study of the Anti-Slavery epoch. It 
was an era of intellectual giants and moral 
heroes. Great men walked in regiments up 
and down the land. It was the age of our 
greatest statesmen of the IS'orth and South, 
— Webster and Oalhoun ; of our greatest 
13 



Rise of American Slavery 

soldiers, — Grant, Sherman, Thomas and Sher- 
idan, and of Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It 
was the era of our greatest orators, Phil- 
lips and Beecher ; of our greatest editors, led 
by Greeley and KajTnond ; of our greatest 
poets and scholars, Whittier and Lowell 
and Emerson ; and of our greatest President, 
the Martyr of Emancipation. So wonderful 
are those scenes named Gettysburg, Appo- 
mattox, and the room where the Emancipation 
Act was signed, that even the most skeptical 
have felt that the issues of liberty and life for 
millions of slaves justified the entrance of a 
Divine Figure upon the human battle-field. 
This L^nseen Leader and Captain of the host 
had dipped His sword in heaven, and carried 
a blade that was red with insufferable wrath 
against oppression, cruelty and wrong. 

Now that fifty years have passed since 
the Civil War, the events of that conflict 
have taken on their true perspective, and 
movements once clouded have become clear. 
For great men and nations alike, the suggest- 
ive hours are the critical hours and epochs. 
That w^s a critical epoch for Athens, when 
Demosthenes plead the cause of the republic, 
and insisted that Athens must defend her 
liberties, her art, her laws, her social institu- 
14 



Growth of the Traffic 

tions, and in the spirit of democracy resist 
the tyrant Philip, who came with gifts in his 
hands. That was a critical hour for brave 
little Holland, dreaming her dreams of lib- 
erty, — when the burghers resisted the regi- 
ments of bloody Alva, and, clinging to the 
dykes with their finger-tips, fought their way 
back to the fields, expelled Philip of Spain, 
and, having no fortresses, lifted up their hands 
and exclaimed, " These are our bayonets 
and walls of defense ! " Big with destiny also 
for this republic was that critical hour when 
Lincoln, in his first inaugural, pleaded with 
the South not to destroy the Union, nor to turn 
their cannon against the free institutions that 
seemed " the last, best hope of men." But 
the eyes of the men of the South were holden, 
and they were drunk with passion. They 
lighted the torch that kindled a conflagration 
making the Southern city a waste and the 
rich cotton-field a desolation. 

At the very beginning, the founders and 
fathers of the nation were under the delusion 
that it was possible to unite in one land 
two antagonistic principles, — liberty and sla- 
very. It has been said that the Eepublic, 
founded in I^ew England, was nothing but an 
attempt to translate into terms of prose the 
15 



Rise of American Slave 



ry 



dreams that haunted the soul of John Milton 
his long life through. The founders believed 
that every man must give an account of him- 
self to God, and because his responsibility 
was so great, they felt that he must be abso- 
lutely free. Since no king, no priest, and 
no master could give an account for him, he 
must be self-governing in politics, self -con- 
trolling in industry, and free to go immedi- 
ately into the presence of God with his pen- 
itence and his prayer. The fathers sought 
religious and political freedom, — not money 
or lands. But the new temple of liberty 
was to be for the white race alone, and these 
builders of the new commonwealth never 
thought of the black man, save as a servant in 
the house. For more than two centuries, 
therefore, the wheat and the tares grew to- 
gether in the soil. When the tares be 
gan to choke out the wheat, the uprooting 
of the foul growth became inevitable. Per- 
haps the Civil "War was a necessity, — for this 
reason, the disease of slavery had struck in 
upon the vitals of the nation and the only 
cure was the surgeon's knife. Therefore 
God raised up soldiers, and anointed them as 
surgeons, with '* the ointment of war, black 
and sulphurous." 

i6 



Growth of the Traffic 

By a remarkable coincidence, the year that 
brought a slave ship to Jamestown, Virginia, 
brought the Mayflower and the Pilgrim 
fathers to Plymouth Rock. It is a singular 
fact that the star of hope and the orb of 
night rose at one and the same hour upon the 
horizon. At first the rich men of London 
counted the Virginia tobacco a luxury, but the 
weed soon became a necessity, and the captain 
of the African ship exchanged one slave for 
ten huge bales of tobacco. A second cargo 
of slaves brought even larger dividends to the 
owners of the slave ship. Soon the story of 
the financial returns of the traffic began to 
inflame the avarice of England, Spain and 
Portugal. The slave trade was exalted to 
the dignity of commerce in wheat and 
flour, coal and iron. Just as ships are now 
built to carry China's tea and silk, India's in- 
digo and spices, so ships were built in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the 
kidnapping of African slaves, and the sale of 
these men to the sugar and cotton planters of 
the "West Indies and of America. Even the 
stories of the gold and diamond fields of 
South Africa and Alaska have had less power 
to inflame men's minds than the stories 
of the black men in the forests of Africa, 
17 



Rise of American Slavery 

every one of whom was good for twenty 
guineas. 

The London of 1700 experienced a boom 
in slave stocks as the London of 1900 in rub- 
ber stocks. Merchants and captains, after a 
few years' absence, returned to London to 
buy houses, carriages and gold plate, and by 
their political largesses to win the title of 
baronet, and even seats in the House of Lords. 
This illusion of gold finally fell upon the 
throne itself, and King William and Queen 
Mary lent the traffic royal patronage. At 
the very time when men in Boston, exultant 
over the success of their experiment in de- 
mocracy, were writing home to London about 
this ideal republic of God that had been set 
up at Plymouth, and the orb of liberty began 
to flame with light and hope for ^""ew Eng- 
land, this other orb began to fling out its rays 
of sorrow, disease and death across Africa 
and the southern sands. 

At length, in 1713, Queen Anne, in the 
Treaty of Utrecht, after a long and arduous 
series of diplomatic negotiations, secured for 
the English throne a monopoly of the slave 
traffic, and the ^^Titers of the time spoke of 
this treaty as an event that would make the 
queen's name to be eulogized as long as 
i8 



Growth of the Traffic 

time should last. But two hundred years 
have reversed the judgnient of the civilized 
world. History now recalls Queen Anne's 
monopoly of the slave traffic as it recalls 
the Black Death in England, the era of 
smallpox in Scotland, — for one such treaty 
is probably equal to two bubonic plagues, 
or three epidemics of cholera and yellow 
fever. 

Finally, an informal agreement was entered 
upon between the English slave dealers, the 
Spaniards and Portuguese, — an agreement 
that was literally a " covenant with death and 
a compact with hell." The Portuguese be- 
came the explorers of the interior, the advance 
agents of the traffic, who reported what tribes 
had the tallest, strongest men, and the most 
comely women. The Spaniards maintained 
the slave stations on the coast, and took over 
from the Portuguese the gangs of slaves who 
were chained together and driven down to 
the coast; the English slave dealers owned 
the ships, bought the slaves at wholesale, 
transported the wretches across the sea, and 
retailed the poor creatures to the planters of 
the various colonies. Between 1620 and 1770 
three million slaves were driven in gangs 
down to the African seacoast, and transported 
19 



Rise of American Slavery 

to the colonies. At this time some of the 
greatest houses in London, Lisbon and Madrid 
were founded, and some of the greatest family 
names were established during these one hun- 
dred and fifty years when the slave traiRc 
was most prosperous. De Bau thinks that 
another 250,000 slaves perished during the 
voyages across the sea. For the eighteenth 
century was a century of cruelt}^ as well as 
gold, — of crime and art, — of murderous hate 
and increasing commerce. If the prophet 
Daniel had been describing the Spain, Portu- 
gal and England of that time, he would have 
portrayed them as an image of mud and 
gold, — but chiefly mud. Little wonder that 
Thomas Jefferson, in his "Kotes on Virginia," 
treating of the influence and possible con- 
sequences of slavery, wrote, " Indeed, I 
tremble for my country when I reflect that 
God is just." As England anchored war- 
ships in the harbour of Shanghai, and forced 
the opium traffic upon China, so she forced 
the slave traffic upon the American colonies 
by gun and cannon. The story of the Eng- 
lish kings who crowded slavery upon the 
South makes up one of the blackest pages 
in the history of a country that has been 
like unto a sower who went forth to sow 

20 



Growth of the Traffic 

with one hand the good seed of liberty and 
justice, while ^vith the other she sowed the 
tares of slavery and oppression. 

From the very beginning, the climate and 
the general atmosphere of the North was un- 
friendly to slavery, just as the cotton, sugar 
and indigo, as well as the warm climate of 
the South encouraged slave labour. At first, 
neither Boston nor Xew York associated 
wrong with the custom of buying and using 
slave labour. And when, after a short time, 
opposition began to develop, this antagonism 
to slavery was based upon economic, rather 
than upon moral considerations. 

Jonathan Edwards was our great theo- 
logian, but at the ver}^ time that Jonathan Ed- 
wards was writing his " Freedom of the Will " 
and preaching his revival sermons on " Sin- 
ners in the Hands of an Angry God," he was 
the owner of slaves. When that philosopher, 
whose writings had sent his name into all 
Europe, died, he bequeathed a favourite slave 
to his descendants. Whitefield was the great 
evangelist of that era, but Whitefield dur- 
ing his visit to the colonies purchased a 
Southern plantation, stocked it with seventy- 
five slaves, and when he died bequeathed it to 
a relative, whom he characterizes as " an elect 

21 



Rise of American Slavery 

lady," who, notwithstanding she was " elect," 
was quite willing to derive her livelihood 
from the sweat of another's brow. 

And yet even in the Providence planta- 
tions, where more slaves were bought and 
sold than in any other of the Northern colo- 
nies, the traffic soon began to wane. The 
simple fact is that the rigour of the climate 
and the severity of the winters of Kew Eng- 
land made the life of the African brief. 
The slave was the child of a tropic clime, un- 
accustomed to clothing, and the January 
snows and the March winds soon developed 
consumption and chilled to death the child 
of the tropics. It was found impracticable 
to use the black man in either the forests or 
fields, and in a short time slaves were pur- 
chased only as domestic servants. 

But about 1750 the conscience of New 
England awakened. Men in the pulpit 
took a strong position against the traffic. 
The Congregational churches of Vermont, 
Massachusetts, and Connecticut declared 
against slavery and asked the legislatures to 
adopt the Jewish law, emancipating all slaves 
whatsoever at the end of the tenth year of 
servitude. A little later, slavery was made 
illegal in all the New England colonies. 

22 



Growth of the Traffic 

Pennsylvania at length remembered Will- 
iam Penn, who had freed all his slaves in 
his will, while the German churches of that 
State began to expel all members who were 
known to have bought or held a slave. 
When, therefore, the convention met in Phila- 
delphia, in IT 76, preparatory to the Declara- 
tion of Independence, the delegates were able 
to say that as a whole the Northern colonies 
had cleansed their borders of the abuse, and 
had decided to build their institutions and 
civilization upon free labour, as the sure foun- 
dation of individual and social prosperity. 

But the antagonism to slavery in the South- 
ern colonies was only less pronounced, and 
this, not because of economic reasons, but be- 
cause of moral considerations. The Southern 
climate was friendly to cotton and tobacco, 
indigo and rice. These products made heavy 
demands upon labour, but white labour was 
unequal to the intense heat of the Southern 
summer and workmen w^ere scarce. During 
the revolutions under King Charles I and 
Charles II and the wars at the beginning of 
the eighteenth century, England needed every 
man at home. Virginia offered high wages 
and large land rewards, but it was well-nigh 
impossible for her to secure immigrants and 
23 



Rise of American Slavery 

the labour she needed. In that hour the cap- 
tain of a slave ship appeared in the House of 
Burgesses and offered to supply the need, but 
the people of Virginia instructed the dele- 
gates to the assembly to protest against the 
traffic. Finally, the colony imposed a duty 
upon each slave landing, and made the duty 
so high as to destroy the profits of the slave 
trade. King George was furious with anger, 
and sent out a royal proclamation forbidding 
all interference with the slave traific under 
heavy penalty, and affirming that this trade 
was " highly beneficial to the colonies, as well 
as remunerative to the throne." Growing 
more antagonistic to slavery, the planters of 
Fairfax County called a convention at which 
Washington presided. Later, in Philadelphia, 
Benjamin Franklin brought in the resolutions 
condemning slavery as " a wicked, cruel and 
unjustifiable trade." Soon the leading men of 
the Southern colonies sent a formal protest to 
England. Lord Mansfield supported them 
in a decision that in English countries, gov- 
erned by English laws, freedom was the rule, 
and slavery illegal, unless the colony, through 
its assembly, expressly legalized the slave 
traffic. 

When the first convention met in Philadel- 
24 



Growth of the Traffic 

phia, Jefferson included among the articles of 
indictment against George the Third this 
paragraph : " He has waged cruel war against 
human nature itself, violating its most sacred 
rights of life and liberty in the persons of a 
distant people who never offended him, capti- 
vating and carrying them into slavery or to 
incur a miserable death in the transportation 
thither." This passage, however, was struck 
out of the Declaration in compliance with the 
wishes of the delegates from two colonies, 
who desired to continue slavery. But in 
1784: Jefferson reopened the question by re- 
porting an ordinance prohibiting slavery after 
the year 1800 in the territory that afterwards 
became Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and 
Kentucky, as well as the territory north of 
the Ohio River. This anti-slavery clause was 
lost in the convention by only a single vote. 
" The voice of a single individual," w^rote Jef- 
ferson, " w^ould have prevented this abomi- 
nable crime. But Heaven will not always be 
silent. The friends to the rights of human 
nature will in the end prevail." 

Indeed, in the Southern States up to the 

very beginning of the Civil TVar there was 

a strong anti-slavery sentiment. "When the 

first meeting was held in Baltimore to or- 

25 



Rise of American Slavery 

ganize the Abolition Society, eighty-five aboli- 
tion societies in various counties of Southern 
States sent delegates to the convention. It is 
a striking fact that the South can claim as 
much credit for the organization of the Aboli- 
tion Society as AVilliam Lloyd Garrison and 
his friends in the North. For the real re- 
sponsibility for slavery does not rest upon 
Virginia, the Carolinas or Georgia, but upon 
the mother-land, upon the avarice of the 
throne, the cupidity of English merchants 
and the power of English guns and can- 
non. 

By the year 1790, therefore, slavery in the 
North had either died of inanition, or had 
been rendered illegal by the action of State 
legislatures, and the chapter was closed. 
There are the best of reasons also for believ- 
ing that in the South slavery was waning, 
while the influence of planters who believed 
free labour more economical was Avaxing. 
Suddenly an unexpected event changed the 
whole situation. The commerce of the world 
rests upon food and clothing. The food of the 
world is in wheat and corn, the clothing in cot- 
ton and wool. But wool was so expensive that 
for the millions in Europe cotton garments 
were a necessity. England had the looms and 
26 



Growth of the Traffic 

the spindles, but she could not secure tlie cot- 
ton, and the Southern planters could not grow 
it. The cotton pod, as large as a hen's egg, 
bursts when ripe and the cotton gushes out in 
a white mass. Unfortunately, each pod holds 
eight or ten seeds, each as large as an orange 
seed. To clean a single pound of cotton re- 
quired a long day's work by a slave. The 
production of cotton was slow and costly, the 
acreage therefore small, and the profits 
slender. The South was burdened with debt, 
the plantations were mortgaged, and in 1792 
the outlook for the cotton planters was very 
dark, and all hearts were filled with fore- 
boding and fear. One winter's night Mrs. 
General G-reene, wife of the Eevolutionary 
soldier, was entertaining at dinner a company 
of planters. In those days the planters had 
but one thought — how to rid their plantations 
of their mortgages. It happened that the 
conversation turned upon some possible 
mechanism for cleaning the cotton. Mrs. 
Greene turned to her guests, and, reminding 
Eli Whitney, a young ]N'ew Englander who 
was in her home teaching her children, that 
he had invented two or three playthings for 
her children, suggested that he turn his at- 
tention to the problem. 
27 



Rise of American Slavery 

Young AVhitney had no tools, but he soon 
made them ; had no wire, but he drew his 
own wii'e, and within a few months he per- 
fected the cotton gin. When the cat climbs 
upon the crate filled with chickens, it thrusts 
its paw between the laths and pulls off the 
feathers, leaving the chicken behind the laths. 
Young Whitney substituted wires for laths, 
and a toothed wheel for the cat's paw, and 
soon pulled all the cotton out at the top, leav- 
ing the seeds to drop through a hole in the 
bottom of the gin. Within a year every great 
planter had a carpenter manufacturing gins 
for the fields. With Whitney's machine one 
man in a single day could clean more cot- 
ton than ten negroes could clean in an entire 
winter. Planters annexed wild land, a hun- 
dred acres at a time. For the first time the 
South was able to supply all the cotton that 
England's manufacturers desu^ed. The cities 
in England awakened to redoubled industry. 
Southern cotton lands jumped from §5 to 
$50 an acre. Whitney found the South pro- 
ducing 10,000 bales in 1793. Sixty years 
later it produced -1,000,000 bales. Historians 
affirm that this single invention added 
$1,000,000,000 as a free gift to the planters of 
the South. 

28 



Growth of the Traffic 

Although Eli Whitney took out patents, 
every planter infringed them. Whole States 
organized movements to fight Whitney be- 
fore the courts. In 1808, when his patent 
expired, he was poorer than when he began. 
Feeling that the Southern planters had 
robbed him of the legitimate reward of his 
invention, Whitney came North and gave 
himself to the study of firearms. He invented 
what is now known as the Colt's revolver, 
the Remington rifle and the modern machine 
gun. Beginning with the feeling that he had 
been robbed of his just rights by Southern 
planters, Whitney ended by inventing the 
very weapons that deprived the planters of 
their slaves and preserved the Union. 

But the new prosperity and the increased 
acreage for cotton in the South created an 
enormous market for slaves, and soon the sea 
swarmed with slave ships. Prices advanced 
five hundred per cent, until a slave that had 
brought $100 brought $500, and some even 
$1,000. What made slavery no scourge, but 
a great religious moral blessing? The an- 
swer is, the cotton gin and the cotton interest 
that gave a new desire to promote slavery, 
to spread it, and to use its labour. For Eli 
Whitney had made cotton to be king. Cot- 

29 



Rise of American Slavery 

ton encouraged slavery ; slavery at last threat- 
ened the Union and so brought on the Civil 
War. 

The value of the slave as an economic 
machine depended upon his physique, health 
and general endurance. The slave hunters 
were Portuguese, Spaniards and Arabs, who 
drove the negroes in gangs down to the 
coast, where they were loaded upon the 
slave ships. When the trade was brisk and 
prices high, the hold of the ship was crowded 
to suffocation, and intense suffering was in- 
evitable. Landing at Savannah or Charles- 
ton, Mobile or New Orleans, the slaves 
were sold at wholesale, in the auction place. 
Later, the slave dealer drove them in gangs 
through the villages, where they were sold at 
retail. The cost of a slave varied with the 
])rice of cotton. Of the three million one 
hundred thousand slaves living in the South 
in 1850, one million eight hundred thousand 
were raising cotton. That was the great ex- 
port, the basis of prosperity. So great was the 
demand in England for Southern cotton that 
profits were enormous. The Secretary of the 
Treasury in Buchanan's time published a list 
of forty Southern planters in Louisiana and 
Mississippi. One of them had five hundred 
30 



Growth of the Traffic 

negroes and sold the cotton from his planta- 
tion at a net profit of one hundred thousand ^ 
dollars. Each negro, therefore, netted his 
master that year five hundred dollars. The 
working life of a slave was short, scarcely 
more than seven years, and for that reason 
the ablest negro was never worth more than 
from a thousand to twelve hundred dollars. ^ 

But if the cost of free labour was high, the 
cost of supporting the slave under the South- 
ern climate was very low. The climate of the 
Gulf States is gentle, soft and propitious. 
Of forty planters who published their state- 
ments, the average cost of clothing and feed- 
ing a slave for one year was thirty dollars. 
One Louisiana planter, however, showed that 
one hundred slaves on his plantation had cost 
him in cash outlay seven hundred and fifty 
dollars for the entire year. This planter 
states that his slaves raised their own corn, 
converted it into meal and bread, raised their 
own sugar-cane, made their own molasses, 
built their own houses out of the forest hard 
by. The slaves also raised their own bacon, >^ 
but unfortunately the price of meat was so 
high as to make its use only an occasional / 
luxury. North Carolina passed a law com- 
manding the planters to give their slaves meat 
31 



Rise of American Slavery 

at certain intervals, but the law remained a 
dead letter. Other states, by legal enactment, 
fixed the amount of meal that should be 
given to slaves. 

When Fanny Kemble, the English actress, 
retired from the stage, it was to marry a 
Southern planter, and her autobiography and 
private letters throw a flood of light upon 
the life of the slaves upon a tjqDical plantation 
in the cotton States. She says that the 
planter expected that about once in seven 
years he must buy a new set of hands ; that 
the slaves did little in the ^vinter, but they 
worked fifteen hours a day in the spring, and 
often eighteen hours a day in the summer 
until the cotton was picked. She adds that 
the negro children used to beg her for a taste 
of njeat, just as English children plead for 
a little candy. She states that on her hus- 
band's estate slave breeding was most im- 
portant and remunerative, and that the 
increase and the young slaves sold made 
it possible for the plantation to pay its in- 
terest. " Every negro child born was worth 
two hundred dollars the moment it drew 
breath." 

It was this separation of families that 
touched the heart of Fanny Kemble Butler, 
32 



Growth of the Traffic 

and stirred the indignation of Harriet 
Martineau, who at the end of her year at 
the South wrote that she would rather walk 
through a penitentiary or a lunatic asylum 
than through the slave quarters that stood 
in the rear of the great house where she Avas 
entertained. It is this element that explains 
the statement of John Eandolph of Yu-ginia. 
Conversing one evening about the notable ora- 
tions to which he had listened, the great law- 
yer said that the most eloquent words he had 
ever heard were ^'spoken on the auction 
block by a slave mother." It seemed that she 
pleaded with the auctioneer and the specta- 
tors not to separate her from her children 
and her husband, and she made these men, 
who were trafficking in human life, realize the 
meaning of Christ's words, " Woe unto hun 
that doth offend one of M}^ little ones; it 
were better for him that a millstone were 
placed about his neck and that he were cast 
into the depths of the sea." 

In this era of industrial education for the 
coloured race it is interesting to note that five 
of the slave States imposed heavy penalties 
upon any one who should teach the slaves to 
read or write. Virginia, however, permitted 
the owner to teach his slave in the interest of 
33 



Rise of American Slavery 

better management of the plantation. Korth 
Carolina finally consented to arithmetic. 
After 1831 and the Xat Turner negro insur- 
rection more stringent laws were passed to 
prevent the slaves learning how to read, lest 
they chance upon abolition documents. A 
Georgian planter said that " The very slight- 
est amount of education impairs their value 
as slaves, for it instantly destroys their con- 
tentedness ; and since you do not contemplate 
changing their condition, it is surely doing 
them an ill service to destroy their acqui- 
escence in it." In spite of the law, however, 
domestic servants were frequently taught to 
read. Frederick Douglass found a teacher in 
his mistress, where he was held as a domestic 
slave, and Douglass in turn taught his fellow 
slaves on the plantation by stealth. The ad- 
vertisements of slaves that mention the 
slave's ability to read and cipher, as a reason 
for special value, prove that the more intel- 
ligent slaves had at least the rudiments 
of knowledge. Olmstead, in his "Cotton 
Kingdom," says he visited a plantation in 
Mississippi, where one of the negroes had, 
with the full permission of his master, taught 
all his fellows how to read. 

An examination of the influence of slavery 
34 



Growth of the Traffic 

upon the poorer whites shows that two-thirds 
of the white population suffered hardly less 
than did the coloured people. The slavehold- 
ing class formed an aristocracy, who domi- 
nated and ruled as lords. When the war broke 
out, there were about four hundred thousand 
slaveholders, and nine and a half million peo- 
ple. But of these four hundred thousand slave- 
holders, only about eight thousand owned 
more than fifty slaves each, and it was this 
mere handful who lived in splendid homes, 
surrounded with luxury, beauty, and refine- 
ment. Travellers who have thrown the veil 
of romance and enchantment about the 
Southern home, with a great house embow- 
ered in magnolia trees, its rooms stored with 
art treasures, its walls lined with marbles and 
bronzes, and its banqueting room at night 
crowded with beautiful women and handsome 
men — these travellers speak of what was as 
a matter of fact exceptional. "We must re- 
member that these men represented a small 
aristocracy ; that their mode of life, so charm- 
ingly pictured by many accomplished writers, 
was the life of a select group, and that the 
great slave plantations numbered not more 
than eight thousand in that vast area. 

From the hour of the organization of the 
35 



Rise of American Slavery 

Abolition Society, these Southern planters 
assumed an aggressive position. Their edit- 
ors, politicians and lawyers began to publish 
briefs, in support of the peculiar institution. 
The usual argument began with ridicule of 
Thomas Jefferson's famous statement that 
all men are born equal. The second argu- 
ment was an economic one, based on the 
value of the slaves. Three million slaves 
would average a value of five hundi^ed dollars 
each, and this meant a billion five huncbed 
millions of property, that had to be consid- 
ered as so much property in ships, factories, 
engines, reapers, pastures, meadows, herds 
and flocks. All planters invoked the words 
of Moses, permitting the Hebrews to hold 
slaves, and therefore exhibiting slavery as a 
divine institution. Statesmen justified the 
Fugitive Slave Law by triumphantly quoting 
Paul's letter, sending Onesimus back to his 
rich master, Philemon. Jefferson Davis 
rested his argument upon the curse that God 
pronounced upon Canaan, and asserted that 
slavery was established by a decree of Al- 
mighty God and that through the portal of 
slavery alone the descendant of the graceless 
son of Xoah entered the temple of civilization. 
Once a year the Southern minister preached 

36 



Growth of the Traffic 

from the text, " Cursed be Canaan, the son of 
Ham. A servant of servants shall he be 
unto his brethren." 

A few scholars grounded themselves on the 
scientific argument. These men held that 
the black man was separated from the Saxon 
by a great chasm, that if freed he was not 
equal to self-government, that he was a mere 
child when placed in competition with the 
white man, and that the strong owed it to the 
weak, that it was the duty of every su- 
perior man to take charge of the inferior, 
and impose government from without. 

The politician had a stronger argument in 
defense of slavery. He held that the na- 
tion that was strong, educated, prosperous, 
with an army and navy, had not only the 
right but the duty of imposing government 
upon a colony that was ignorant, poor, and 
degraded, and that this example of the 
nation governing a colony by force of arms 
proved that the white man, as master, should 
impose government from without upon the 
slave. 

Not until years after the war was over did 

men fully realize that slavery was weight and 

free labour wings to the people. The North 

believed that the working man should be free, 

37 



Rise of American Slavery 

that he should be educated in the public 
schools, and that the only way to increase 
his wage was to increase his intelligence. 
Each new knowledge, therefore, brought a 
new economic hunger, and made the free 
labourer a good buyer in the market, thus sup- 
porting factories and shops. Contrariwise 
the slave was a poor buyer. The negro 
picking cotton out of the pod had few wants, 
— one garment about his loins, a pone of corn 
bread, a husk mattress, — no more. For that 
reason the slave starved the factory and shop. 
Invention in the South perished. Every at- 
tempt to found a factory was attended 
with failure. Of necessity, the ISTorth grew 
steadily richer straight through the war, 
while the South grew steadily poorer. The 
war closed with jSTorthern factories and shops 
and trade at the high tide of prosperity. The 
free working man asked many forms of cloth- 
ing for the body, books and magazines for 
the mind, pictures for the walls, sewing-ma- 
chine, the reed organ, every conceivable 
comfort and convenience for his family, and 
these many forms of hunger nourished inven- 
tion, made the towns centres of manufactur- 
ing life, and built a rich nation. The North- 
ern working man put his head into his task, 
38 



Growth of the Traffic 

the slave, his heel. When the war was over, 
the South was like a crushed egg, impover- 
ished by slavery. The peculiar institution 
had served well eight thousand slave planters, 
each of whom owned more than fifty slaves. 
But slavery had starved the remaining mil- 
lions. 

Now that the new era has come, no states- 
man, no scholar, no editor, has ever indicted 
slavery as the costliest possible form of pro- 
duction, with half the skill, eloquence and 
conviction of Southern writers. What North- 
ern men believe, the Southerner knows. Un- 
consciously the Southern youth was handi- 
capped in the commercial race. His Northern 
brother was an athlete, stripped to the skin, 
while he dragged a fetter, invisible. That 
he should have come so near to winning the 
race is a tribute to his courage, endurance, 
and a mental resource that can never be 
praised too highly. If the rest of the world 
could only fight for good causes, with half 
the ability, chivalry and bravery that the 
South fought for a bad economic system, the 
world would soon enter upon the millennium. 



39 



II 

WEBSTEK AND CALHOUN : THE 
BATTLE LINE IN AKKAY 

THE year was 1830; the scene, the Senate 
Chamber in Washington ; the combat- 
ants, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun. 
Two hmidred and ten years had now passed 
since the ship of liberty had come to New 
England, and the ship of slavery had landed 
in Virginia. These centuries had given am- 
ple time for the development of the real 
genius and influence of liberty and free labour 
in the civilization of the North, and of slave 
labour upon the institutions of the South. 
Little by little the merchants, manufacturers 
and professional classes of the North had 
come to feel that a free and educated work- 
ing class produces wealth more cheaply and 
rapidly than slave labour, and that the work- 
ing people of America must be educated and 
free, if they were to compete with the free 
working people of Great Britain and Europe. 
Contrariwise, the South believed that manual 
labour was a task for slaves, that cotton, rice 
40 



The Battle Line in Array 

and sugar were produced more rapidly by 
slave labour than by free labour. The South- 
ern civilization was built on the plan of pro- 
ducing raw cotton, and exchanging it for 
manufactured goods. It did not escape the 
notice of Southern leaders, however, that 
under free labour the North had nearly 
double the population and wealth of the 
South. But Senator Hayne explained this 
by saying that the biggest nations had never 
been the greatest, and that the renowned 
peoples had been like Athens, — small states, 
elect and patrician. 

But darkness and light, summer and winter, 
liberty and slavery cannot exist side by side, 
in peace and tranquillity. Unite hydrogen 
and chlorine, and the chemist has an explosion 
that takes off the roof of the house. And be- 
cause liberty and slavery were antagonistic, 
and mutually destructive, whenever the repre- 
sentatives of both came together there was 
inevitably an explosion either on the platform 
or through the press. It could not have been 
otherwise. In Palestine two opposing civili- 
zations came into collision, — one the Hebrew 
and the other the Philistine, — and the Phi- 
listine went down. In Holland the Dutch- 
men, working towards democracy, collided 
41 



Webster and Calhoun 

with the Spaniards, working towards autoc- 
racy, and the Spaniard went down. In Eng- 
land, Hampden and Pym came into collision 
with Charles the First and Archbishop Laud. 
The two leaders of democracy wished to in- 
crease the privileges of the common people by 
diffusing property, liberty, office and honours, 
while Charles the First and Laud wished to 
lessen the powers of the people, and to in- 
crease the privileges of the throne; de- 
mocracy won, and autocracy lost. And now 
in this republic, a civilization based upon the 
freedom and education of the working classes 
came into collision with the Southern civili- 
zation, based upon ignorant slave labour, and 
there were upheavals and political outbreaks 
everywhere. In vain Abraham tried to house 
Isaac, the son of the free woman, and Ish- 
mael, the son of the slave woman, under one 
and the same roof. Slowly the men in the 
North and the manufacturers of England 
came to feel that slavery was interfering with 
the commerce and prosperity, not simply of 
the people of this republic, but of Europe 
also. Slavery was an economic obstruction, 
lying directly in the path of progress. 

The two men who marked out the lines of 
struggle and precipitated the conflict were 
42 



The Battle Line in Array 

Daniel Webster and Jolin C. Calhoun. 
Daniel Webster, the defender of the Consti- 
tution, affirmed that the Union was one and 
inseparable, now and forever. John C. Cal- 
houn said, " The State is sovereign and su- 
preme, and the Union secondary." In effect 
Webster said, " The central government is the 
sun, and the States are planets, moving round 
about the central orb." Calhoun answered, 
" There is no central sun in our political sys- 
tem, but only planets, each revolving in any 
orbit it elects for itself." Webster said, '' In 
the cosmic and political system alike, it is the 
central sun that causes the States like planets 
to move in order and harmony, without col- 
lision, and with rich harvests." Calhoun an- 
swered that every planet should be its own 
sun, and, if it choose, be a runaway orb, and 
collide with whom it will. 

Finally, the argument of Webster and Cal- 
houn was submitted to armies. Grant and 
Sherman said, " Webster is right ; the Union 
must be maintained." Lee and Jackson an- 
swered, " Calhoun is right ; the Union must 
go, and the sovereign State remain." At Bull 
Kun, Calhoun's doctrine seemed to be in the 
ascendancy ; at Gettysburg, Webster's argu- 
ment seemed to have the more cogency ; at 
43 



Webster and Calhoun 

Appomattox Lee withdrew his support from 
Calhoun, and allowed Daniel Webster's plea 
that the Union must abide and be now and 
forever, one and inseparable. 

The Northern statesman, Daniel "Webster, 
was probably the greatest political genius 
our country has produced. He w^as born in 
ISTew Hampshire, in 1782, and was seven 
years old when his father gave him a copy 
of the newly-adopted Constitution, w^hich he 
soon committed to memory. His father be- 
longed to the farmer class, who read by night 
and brooded upon his reading by day. In an 
era of privation for the colonists, by stern 
denial he put his son through Phillips Exeter 
Academy and Dartmouth College. AVhile 
still a young man, Daniel Webster leaped 
into fame by a single argument before the 
Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and became 
the competitor of jurists like Eufus Choate. 
His orations on "Bunker Hill Monument," 
the " Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers," the 
" Death of Adams and Jefferson," are among 
the really sublime passages in the history of 
eloquence. In the Girard College case AVeb- 
ster established the point that Christianity 
is a part of the common law of the land. 
Criminal lawyers quote Webster's argument 
44 



The Battle Line in Array 

in the great Knapp murder trial, that the 
voice of conscience is the voice of God, as 
the world's best statement of the moral 
imperative, and the automatic judgment seat 
God has set up in the city of man's soul. 

Even from the physical view-point he de- 
served his epithet, 'Hhe godlike Daniel." 
Not so tall as Calhoun or Clay, he was more 
solidly built than either of the Southern 
orators. His head was so large and beauti- 
ful, that Crawford, the sculptor, thought 
Webster his ideal model for a statue of 
Jupiter. His skin was a deep bronze and 
copper hue, but when excited his face be- 
came luminous, and translucent as a lamp 
of alabaster. His opponents say that Web- 
ster had the finest vocal instrument of his 
generation, and that he was a master of all 
possible effects through speech. His voice 
was mellow and sweet, with an extraordinary 
range, extending from the ringing clarion 
tenor note, to the bass of a deep-toned organ. 
The historian tells us "Webster had the 
faculty of magnifying a word into such 
prodigious volume that it was dropped from 
his lips as a great boulder might drop into the 
sea, and it jarred the Senate Chamber like a 
clap of thunder." The Kentucky lawyer, 
45 



-i 



Webster and Calhoun 

Thomas Marshall, said when Webster came 
to his peroration in his reply to Hayne, that 
he " listened as to one inspired." He finally 
thought he saw a halo around the orator's 
head, like the one seen in the old masters' 
depictions of saints. 

Webster's opponent was John C. Calhoun, 
senator from South Carolina. Calhoun was 
the first Southern statesman to mark out the 
lines of battle and indicate the methods of at- 
tack and defense for the supporters of slavery. 
Graduating with high honours at Yale, in the 
class of 1802, Calhoun studied law for three 
years at Litchfield, Connecticut, and then 
decided to enter politics. In the lecture halls 
and class rooms, he stood at the very fore- 
front, as orator and logician. One day, in 
Yale College, Calhoun delivered a speech on 
an apparently absurd proposition, which he 
defended with great acuteness. When he 
had finished, President D wight said, " Cal- 
houn, that is a brilliant piece of logic, and if 
I ever want any one to prove that shad grow 
upon apple trees, I shall appoint you." 

Upon the lines of broad patriotism, with 
reference to the interests of the country as a 
whole, Calhoun supported the war with Eng- 
land in 1S12. From city to city the young 
46 



The Battle Line in Array- 
lawyer journeyed, travelling all the way from 
Charleston and Savannah to Boston and 
Portland, urging the right and the duty 
of the Republic to resist England's claim to 
the right of search of American vessels. Cal- 
houn was widely read in history, he was full of 
intense patriotism, his arguments were clear, 
he had unity, order and movement in his 
thinking, he had the art of putting things, 
and was a perfect master of his audience. At 
thirty years of age Calhoun was as popular 
in Boston as he was later in Savannah and 
Charleston. In 1824, he was elected Yice- 
President, — the only man on the ticket to 
be chosen by popular vote. From that hour 
until his death he remained a member of the 
triumvirate that controlled the destinies of 
the Eepublic, sharing honours with Henry 
Clay and Daniel Webster. 

In the South Calhoun was all but idolized. 
He was tall and slender of person, refined 
and elegant in manners, carrying with him 
great personal charm. He was a puritan in 
his morals, maintained a spotless reputation, 
and escaped all criticism with reference to 
private life that was visited upon his com- 
petitors. Many a Northern man who went 
to Congress hating the very name of Cal- 
47 



Webster and Calhoun 

houn, the arch-secessionist, was compelled to 
confess that he had to steel his heart against 
the charm of Calhoun's speech and person- 
ality. The simplicity of his character, the 
clearness of his thinking, the sincerity and 
moral earnestness of his nature, all united to 
lend him the influence that he exerted over 
men like Oliver Dyer, Webster's friend, who 
said of Calhoun, " He was by all odds the 
most fascinating man in private intercourse 
that I have ever met." 

When Webster and Clay came into colli- 
sion, it was over a subject apparently far re- 
moved from the bondage of slaves. If sla- 
very was the spark that fired the magazine 
for the great explosion in 1861, the tariff 
furnished the powder. The South produced 
raw material, and imported all her tools, 
comforts and conveniences, while the Xorth 
had free labour, and her educated working 
classes were good purchasers, and lent gen- 
erous support to manufacturers. Exporting 
its raw cotton to England, the South sent 
its leaders to Congress to ask for free trade 
with foreign countries, or in any event, a 
lower tariff. The Northern manufacturers 
sent their leaders to Congress to ask for 
protection against foreign woollens, cottons, 
48 



The Battle Line in Array 

and all English tools and French silks, and 
luxuries. Therefore the interests of the 
North antagonized the interests of the 
South. In the South the anti-slavery 
sentiment had disappeared because of 
Whitney's cotton gin. As Beecher wittily 
put it in his Manchester speech : " Slaves 
that before had been worth three to four 
hundred dollars began to be worth six hun- 
dred. That knocked away one-third of 
adherence to the moral law. Then they be- 
came worth seven hundred dollars, and half 
the law went; then eight or nine hundred 
dollars, and there was no such thing as 
moral law; then one thousand or twelve 
hundred dollars, and slavery became one of 
the beatitudes." 

The Southern leaders, therefore, wanted 
free trade with England; the North urged 
protection, in the interest of the whole coun- 
try, rather than a group of States. The South 
believed that Northern politics was selfish ; 
the North believed that the Southern leaders 
were building up English manufacturers, and 
weakening their own country ! The people 
became one great debating club, and the dis- 
pute waxed more bitter day by day. Every 
new event seemed to widen the breach. The 
49 



Webster and Calhoun 

war of the Eevolution made for unity be- 
tween North and South, just as the hammer 
welds together two pieces of red hot iron. 
The soldiers of the Eevolution had marched 
under the same flag, supported the same 
Declaration of Independence, and fought for 
the same Constitution. Slavery in the iS^orth 
had died through inanition, and during the 
eighteenth century in the South also slavery 
seemed in process of extinction. But now, 
in 1830, slavery had become a great source of 
immeasurable wealth to the South, just as 
manufacturing had built up the prosperity 
of the North. 

The tariff discussion came to a climax in 
1828, through the passing of a customs act, 
known as the Tariff of A bominations. Sparks 
falling on ice carry no peril, but sparks falling 
on the dry prairie cause conflagrations. The 
news of the passing of the protective tariff 
created intense excitement in South Caro- 
lina. Public meetings were called in all the 
towns in the land, and protests were made 
against the execution of the new law. Leg- 
islators in the State capital, orators on the 
platform, editors through their columns, 
urged nullification. There were two reasons 
for this growing hostility to protection on the 
50 



The Battle Line in Array 

part of the citizens of Calhoun's State ; first 
the behef that as England was the largest 
purchaser of cotton, it was to South Caro- 
lina's best interest to have English goods 
brought in free ; second the conviction that 
the tariff was a strictly sectional movement 
in the interest of the manufacturing Xorth, 
as opposed to the South with her raw cot- 
ton and slave labour. 

As a candidate for the vice-presidency in 
1828 on the same ticket as General Jackson, 
Calhoun took no definite step until after the 
election, when he published a paper showing 
the evil which the protective tariff was doing 
the Southern states, and asserting the right 
to interpose a veto. In January, 1830, hav- 
ing broken with Jackson and abandoned all 
hope of later obtaining the presidency by 
his aid, Calhoun decided to test the theory 
of nullification upon the national theatre. 
Accordingly, under his direction, Senator 
Hayne inserted in his speech on the Foote 
Resolution on the public lands the defense 
of what was to be known later as the South 
Carolina Doctrine, — that, if a State con- 
sidered a law of Congress unconstitutional 
(as South Carolina asserted the recent tariff 
act to be) the State had the right to nullify 
51 



Webster and Calhoun 

the law, and, if obedience was sought to be 
enforced, the right to secede from the Union. 
His position has been stated by no one so 
clearly as by himself, for he spent the next 
three years perfecting and elaborating his 
argument. As the basis of his structure he 
employed a distinction between " a nation " 
and " a union." England was a nation — the 
United States was a union. Kussia, Austria 
and Turkey were nations — this republic a 
union of sovereign states. Prussia was 
presided over by a king and was a nation — 
the United States was a republic and the 
citizens ruled themselves. Calhoun distin- 
guished also between sovereignty and gov- 
ernment : sovereignty is a birthright, a nat- 
ural and inalienable right vouchsafed by 
God ; government is an artificial right estab- 
lished by law. Sovereignty is an inexpug- 
nable and inherent privilege ; government is 
a secondary and artificial privilege. When 
any sovereign State is injured, it has not only 
the right but the duty to withdraw from the 
compact that has been broken. The popular 
notion is that this idea of Secession was orig- 
inated by Calhoun and was a South Car- 
olina heresy ; as a matter of fact, it was 
first presented in Congress by Josiah Quincy, 
52 



The Battle Line in Array 

and should be called " A Massachusetts 
heresy." 

In 1811, as one of the results of the pur- 
chase of Louisiana by Jefferson, a bill had 
been offered providing for the reception of the 
State of Orleans into the Union. The people 
of New Orleans spoke the French language, 
lived under the code of Napoleon, were mon- 
archial in their sympathy, and Quincy op- 
posed the bill, just as many men to-day 
would oppose the reception into the Union of 
the Philippines, the Hawaiians or the Porto 
Eicans. Mr. Quincy declared that if Orleans 
were admitted, the several States would be 
freed from the federal bonds and that " as it 
will be the right of all States, so it will be 
the duty of some, to prepare definitely for 
separation, amicably if they can, violently if 
they must." "When the speaker ruled out of 
order these remarks, Quincy appealed, and 
the House of Kepresentatives sustained his 
appeal by a vote of fifty-six to fifty-three. 
Congress, under the lead of Massachusetts, 
went on record that " it was permissible to 
discuss a dissolution of the Union, amicably if 
we can — forcibly if we must." 

Two years later, Henry Clay taunted the 
Massachusetts leaders with this threat to dis- 
53 



Webster and Calhoun 

member the Union. In 1844, Charles Francis 
Adams, in a speech 023posing the annexa- 
tion of Texas, affirmed the right of the 
Northern States to dissolve the Union. 
Even Charles Sumner and Horace Greeley 
held the same views in 186 1 . The editor was 
anxious to " let the erring sisters go," believ- 
ing that the withdrawal was parliamentary ; 
while Charles Sumner said : " If they will 
only go, we will build a bridge of gold for 
them to go over on." 

But it was Calhoun who carried the doctrine 
of Nxdlification to its full development, and 
who worked out the theory of sovereignty. 
In the debate with Webster, on the Force 
Bill, he stated his argument as follows : " The 
people of Carolina believe that the Union is 
a union of States and not of individuals ; that 
it was formed by the States, and that the 
citizens of the several States were bound to it 
through the acts of their several States ; that 
each State ratified the Constitution for itself, 
and that it was only by such ratification of 
the States that any obligation was imposed 
upon its citizens. ... On this prmciple 
the people of the State [South Carolina] have 
declared by the ordinance that the Acts of 
Congress which imposed duties under the 
54 



The Battle Line in Array 

authority to lay imposts, were acts not for 
revenue, as intended by the Constitution, but 
for protection, and therefore null and void." 
" The terms union, federal, united, all imply 
a combination of sovereignties, a confedera- 
tion of States. The sovereignty is in the 
several States, and our system is a union of 
twenty-four sovereign powers, under a con- 
stitutional compact, and not of a divided 
sovereignty between the States severally and 
the United States." 

His attitude towards slavery is illustrated 
by the remarks he delivered in the Senate. 
" This agitation has produced one happy 
effect at least ; it has compelled us of the 
South to look into the nature and character 
of this great institution of slaver}^, and correct 
many false impressions that even we had 
entertained in relation to it. Many in the 
South once believed that it was a moral and 
political evil. That folly and delusion are 
gone. We see it now in its true light, and 
regard it as a most safe and stable basis for 
free institutions in the world. It is impossible 
with us that the conflict can take place be- 
tween labour and capital, which makes it so 
difficult to establish and maintain free insti- 
tutions in all wealthy and highly civilized 
55 



Webster and Calhoun 

nations, where such institutions as ours do 
not exist." 

Calhoun's attempt to have his doctrine set 
forth on the floor of the Senate Chamber 
met a crushing blow. When the hour came, 
he chose, to present his view, Hayne of South 
Carolina, who defended the doctrine of 
nullification with great brilliancy and energy. 
Hayne took the ground that nullification was 
the old view always held by Virginia, that it 
was the doctrine of Thomas Jefferson, and 
had been urged by Josiah Quincy of Massa- 
chusetts itself. He was a most gifted orator. 
After a century of preparation, at length 
slavery had chosen its strategic position and 
drawn the battle line. From that moment 
it was certain that slavery must go, or that 
the Union must go. A feeling of apprehen- 
sion spread over the land. Fear fell upon 
the hearts of the people. The one question 
of the hour was whether Webster could 
answer the Southern orator and sweep away 
the fog with which Hayne had enveloped the 
discussion, and make the old Constitution 
stand out as firm as a mountain, with princi- 
ples as bright as the stars. 

By universal consent Webster's reply is 
our finest example of forensic eloquence. 
56 



The Battle Line in Array 

The essence of the argument was the right 
of the majority to control the minority. 
That one State could nullify and secede 
whenever the majority outvoted it, practi- 
cally destroyed the jury system which is em- 
bedded in Saxon history, destroyed the right 
of the majority of the aldermen to control 
the great city, destroyed the right of the 
majority of the supreme justices to make 
their decision. Webster's argument crushed 
the doctrine of secession, and made the Ee- 
public a nation. Thus Calhoun and Webster 
marked out the line of battle, for when the 
men in gray and the men in blue met at 
Gettysburg and Appomattox it was to de- 
termine whether Calhoun or Webster was 
right. Grant's final victory simply stamped 
with a seal of blood the great charter that 
Webster's genius had formulated. 

In retrospect the wonderful thing about 
Webster's reply is that his notes were con- 
fined to a sheet of letter paper. Afterwards 
Webster said that it had been carefully 
prepared, for while there is such a thing as 
extemporaneous delivery, there is '*no ex- 
temporaneous acquisition." Not until he 
entered the Senate Chamber and saw the 
crowds did he feel the slightest trepidation. 
57 



Webster and Calhoun 

" A strange sensation came. My brain was 
free. All that I had ever read or thought or 
acted, in literature, in history, in law, in 
politics, seemed to unroll before me in glow- 
ing panorama, and then it was easy, if I 
wanted a thunderbolt, to reach out and take 
it, as it went smoking by." When Lyman 
Beecher had read Webster's reply to Hayne, 
he turned to a friend and exclaimed, " It 
makes me think of a red-hot cannon-ball 
going through a bucket of empty egg-shells." 
From that hour patriotism rose like a flood. 
For two generations the reply has been to 
Americans what Demosthenes on the Crown 
was to the Athenians. Webster placed the 
nation above the union, made the ISTation, in 
its constitutionally specified sphere of action, 
sovereign and primary, the States secondary 
and subordinate. He thus made possible a 
world-wide victory for free institutions, by 
which, to-day, democracy and self-government 
are making thrones totter and tyrants tremble, 
and giving us the assurance that no govern- 
ment is so stable as a government conceived 
in liberty and dedicated to the proposition 
that all men are free and equal. Webster 
made logical use of "government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people." 
58 



The Battle Line in Array 

The soldiers of Gettysburg exhibited their 
willingness to defend such a government, to 
live for free institutions, and if necessary to 
die for them. 

Now that long time has passed. Southern- 
ers and Northerners alike concede that 
Calhoun made thi^ee mistakes. He fought 
against progress and civilization that has des- 
troyed slavery on moral grounds. He also 
failed to see that slavery was the worst pos- 
sible system of production, for if the South 
produced under slavery 4,000,000 bales of 
cotton in 1861, now that the coloured man is 
free she produces 15,000,000 bales of cotton 
per year. His theory of the right of the 
minority as a sovereign right of secession 
has broken down at the bar of civilization. 
If South Carolina or any State has the right 
to withdraw, whenever the majority of other 
States outvote it, it means that the minority 
always has a right to disobey the majority, 
which means not simply the withdrawal of 
the one State from the many States, but 
later, the withdrawal of a few counties from 
a majority of the counties in that State, 
giving an endless series of confusions. If 
any single doctrine is established among 
civilized nations to-day it is this one, under 
59 



Webster and Calhoun 

democratic institutions — the right of the 
majority to rule. 

Three years later Webster once more 
marked out the basis of the North's position 
for all time in a debate with Calhoun him- 
self. Without the magnificent flights of 
eloquence which distinguished the Reply to 
Hayne, this speech of February 16, 1833, 
was filled with close and powerful reasoning. 
Once and for all he maintained : 

"1. That the Constitution of the United 
States is not a league, confederacy, or com- 
pact between the people of the several States, 
in their sovereign capacities, but a govern- 
ment proper, founded on the adoption of 
the people, and creating direct relations 
between itself and individuals. 

" 2. That no State authority has power to 
dissolve these relations ; that nothing can 
dissolve them but revolution. And that 
consequently there can be no such thing as 
secession without revolution." 

The importance of that argument in the 
history of our country cannot be overesti- 
mated. As James Ford Rhodes has put it : 
" The justification alleged by the South for 
her secession in 1861 was based on the princi- 
ples enunciated by Calhoun ; the cause was 
6o 



The Battle Line in Array 

slavery. Had there been no slavery, the 
Calhoun theory of the Constitution would 
never have been propounded, or had it been, 
it would have been crushed beyond resur- 
rection by Webster's speeches of 1830 and 
1833. The South could not in 1861 justify 
her right to revolution, for there was no op- 
pression nor invalidation of rights. She 
could, however, proclaim to the civilized 
world what was true, that she went to war 
to extend slavery. Her defense therefore is 
that she made the contest for her constitu- 
tional rights, and this attempted vindication 
is founded on the Calhoun theory. On the 
other hand, the ideas of Webster waxed 
strong with the years ; and the Northern 
people, thoroughly imbued with these senti- 
ments, and holding them as sacred truths, 
could not do otherwise than resist the dis- 
memberment of the Union." 

The great crisis that broke Mr. Webster's 
health and perhaps his heart came through 
a misunderstanding. In 1850 the discussion 
over the Wilmot proviso was stirring the 
Senate; Henry Clay had brought in his 
series of compromise resolutions, based on 
the sober belief that the Union was in immi- 
nent danger, and that once again the skillful 
6i 



Webster and Calhoun 

hand that had penned the Missouri Compro 
mise might turn the country back into the 
path of peace and prosperity. Calhoun, the 
second of the great Triumvirate, was already 
within a month of death. Too weak to read 
his speech, he was wheeled into the Senate 
Chamber, to sit with closed eyes while his 
last haughty, arrogant defense of the South's 
rights was read by Senator Mason. But 
the greatest of them all was yet to speak. 
Webster had the foresight of Civil War, 
with rivers of blood, and a man on horse- 
back. Influenced by what we now see was 
the broadest patriotism, he delivered his 
" Seventh of March Speech,"— the opening 
words of which disclose a motive and a pur- 
pose too often overlooked by his critics. " I 
speak to-day for the preservation of the 
Union. ' Hear me for my cause.' " Briefly, 
his position was this :— that the Union was 
primary, dealing with the liberties of fifty 
and later one hundred millions of people, — 
white men as well as black, — and that the 
slavery question was secondary, involving an 
artificial, less important and less permanent 
institution. He discussed slavery from the 
view-point of history, with arguments of the 
philosopher rather than those of the orator. 
62 



The Battle Line in Array 

He defended the compromise measures, with 
their clause in favour of strict enforcement of 
the Fugitive Slave Law, on the ground that 
the Government was solemnly pledged by 
law and contract, and, indeed, " had been 
pledged to it again and again." He closed 
with that famous paragraph demonstrating 
the impossibility of peaceable secession. 
" Sir, he who sees these States now revolv- 
ing in harmony around a common centre, 
and expects them to quit their places, and fly 
off without convulsion, may look the next 
hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from 
their spheres, and jostle against each other 
in the realms of space, without causing the 
wreck of the universe." 

But he had defended the Fugitive Slave 
Law ! — Therefore Abolitionists burned Web- 
ster in efRgy. "VTendell Phillips called him 
a second Judas Iscariot. Whittier wrote 
" Ichabod " across his forehead. Horace 
Mann described him as a " fallen star — Luci- 
fer descending from heaven ! " Every ar- 
row was barbed and poisoned. Webster 
suffered like a great eagle with a dart 
through its heart, beating its bloody wings 
upward through the pathless au\ 

But now that long time has passed, 
63 



Webster and Calhoun 

thoughtful men realize that Webster had 
studied the fundamental question more deeply, 
knew the facts better, and saw clearer than 
his detractors. It is true that he erred 
when he criticized the Abolitionists on the 
ground that in the last twenty years they 
had " produced nothing good or valuable,"— 
that his words were chosen in a way that 
irritated the North unduly, — and, more im- 
portant still, that in his remarks on the 
Fugitive Slave Law he swerved from the 
broad statesmanship which distinguished the 
rest of the speech. But twelve years later 
Abraham Lincoln read Daniel Webster's 
Seventh of March Speech, and said Webster 
was right and Boston was wrong. Lincoln 
put Webster's position into his letter to 
Greeley : " My paramount object in this 
struggle is to save the Union, and not either 
to save or to destroy slavery. If I could 
save the Union without freeing any slave, I 
would do it ; if I could save the Union by 
freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I 
could save the Union by freeing some, and 
leaving others alone, I would also do that. 
What I do about slavery I do because I be- 
lieve it helps to save the Union ; and what 
I forbear I forbear because I do not be- 

64 



The Battle Line in Array 

lieve it would help to save the Union," 
And to-day, after sixty years, our fore- 
most writers are agreeing that " from the 
historical view-point Webster's position was 
one of the highest statesmanship." But 
the recognition of Webster unfortunately 
came too late. 

As time passed Webster felt more and 
more keenly the injustice done him. Bitter- 
ness poisoned his days, and sorrow shortened 
his life. When the autumn came, he made 
ready for the end, knowing he would not 
survive another winter. One October morn- 
ing Webster said to his physician, " I shall 
die to-night." The physician, an old friend, 
answered, " You are right, su\" When the 
t^dlight fell, and all had gathered about his 
bedside, Mr. Webster, in a tone that could 
be heard thi'oughout the house, slowly ut- 
tered these words, ''My general wish on 
earth has been to do my Master's will. That 
there is a God, all must acknowledge. I see 
Him in all these wondrous works, Himself 
how wondrous ! What would be the condi- 
tion of any of us if we had not the hope of 
immortality ? What ground is there to rest 
upon but the Gospel ? There were scattered 
hopes of the immortality of the soul, espe- 
65 



Webster and Calhoun 

cially among the Jews. The Jews believed 
in a spiritual origin of creation ; the Romans 
never reached it ; the Greeks never reached 
it. It is a tradition that commmiication was 
made to the Jews by God Himself through 
Moses. There were intimations crepuscular, 
but — but— but — thank God! the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ brought immortality to light, 
rescued it, brought it to light." 

Then, while all knelt in his death chamber 
and wept, Webster, in a strong, firm voice, 
repeated the whole of the Lord's Prayer, 
closing with these words : " Peace on earth 
and good will to men. That is the happi- 
ness, the essence — good will to men." And 
so the defender of the Constitution, the 
greatest reasoner on political matters of the 
Republic, fell upon death. 

Reflecting upon Webster's unconscious in- 
fluence as set forth in the words,' ' I still 
live," one of his eulogists says that when 
Ruf us Choate took ship for that port where 
he died, a friend exclaimed : " You will 
be here a year hence." " Sk," said the 
lawyer, " I shall be here a hundred years 
hence, and a thousand years hence." With 
his biographer let us also believe that Daniel 
65 



The Battle Line in Array 

TVebster is still here ; that he watches with 
intense interest the spread of democracy ; 
that he now perceives our free institutions 
extending theii' influence around the globe, 
beneficently victorious in many a foreign 
state ; that he rejoices as he beholds '' the 
gorgeous ensign of the Eepublic, now known 
and honoured thi'oughout the world, bearing 
that sentiment dear to every true American 
heart, liberty and union, now and forever, one 
and inseparable." 



67 



Ill 



GAERISOI^ AKD PHILLIPS : AIS^TI- 
SLAYEEY AGITATION 

IN retrospect, historians make a large place 
for the eloquence of the anti-slavery 
epoch, as a force explaining the abolition 
movement. Every great movement must 
have its advocate and voice. Garrison was 
the pen for abolition, Emerson its philosopher, 
Greeley its editor, and in Wendell Phillips 
abolition had its advocate. Political kings are 
oftentimes artificial kings. The orator is 
God's natural king, divinely enthroned. 
Back of all eloquence is a great soul, a great 
cause and a great peril. Our history holds 
three supreme moments in the story of elo- 
quence — the hour of Patrick Henry's speech 
at Williamsburg, Wendell Phillips' at Fan- 
euil Hall and Lincoln's at Gettysburg. The 
great hour and the great crisis, the great 
cause and the great man, all met and melted 
together at a psychologic moment. In ret- 
rospect Phillips seems like a special gift of 
68 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

God to the anti-slavery period. Webster 
had more weight and majesty, Everett a 
higher polish, Douglas more pathos, Beecher 
was more of an embodied thunder-storm, but 
John Bright was probably right when he 
pronounced Wendell Phillips one of the first 
orators of his century, or of any century. 

The man back of Wendell Phillips and 
the abolition movement was William Lloyd 
Garrison. This reformer began his career in 
1825, as a practical printer and occasional 
writer of articles for the daily press. Among 
Garrison's friends were two Quakers, one a 
young farmer, John Greenleaf Whittier; 
the other was Benjamin Lundy, who for 
several years had spent his time and fortune 
protesting against the slave traffic. Lundy 
had visited Hayti, to examine the conditions 
of negro life there,— had returned to Balti- 
more, where he had been brutally beaten 
by a slave dealer, and had finally come to 
Boston to test out the anti-slavery senti- 
ment in New England. He held a meeting 
in a Baptist church, only to have it broken 
up by the pastor, who refused to allow Lundy 
to continue his remarks, on the ground that 
his position could only be offensive to the 
South, and therefore dangerous. But Lundy 
69 



Garrison and Phillips 

succeeded in having a committee appointed 
to consider the problem, and young Garri- 
son was one of its members. A few months 
later, Garrison was made the editor of a 
joui^nal in Bedford, where he began to ad- 
vance more and more radical theories, until 
a rival editor was irritated to the point of 
charging him with " the pert loquacity of a 
blue jay." But Garrison's fidelity to his 
own convictions, and his courage in airing 
them in public, had won the respect of 
the Quaker enthusiast, Lundy, and the old 
man walked all the way from Baltimore to 
Bedford to ask Garrison to join him in his 
work of agitation. A year later the two 
men, one old and discouraged, the other young 
and hopeful, both being practically penni- 
less, — started work in Baltimore. Troubles 
came thick and fast. The slave dealer who 
had beaten Lundy now attacked young 
Garrison. Carelessly worded criticisms of a 
Northern slave dealer from Garrison's own 
town of !N"ewburyport led to a suit for libel, 
and a fine of fifty dollars ; neither man could 
raise the money to pay the fine, and Garri- 
son went to jail for forty-nine days. But the 
youth was full of courage and faith, and in 
1831 we find him once more in Boston, start- 
70 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

ing a new paper, that was, if possible, more 
radical than ever. 

In this second venture he was alone, his 
office was a garret, his only helper a negro 
boy whom he had freed. His paper was 
called the Liberator^ and the first edition 
appeared in January, 1831. Garrison reg- 
istered his sublime vow in his opening edi- 
torial : " I will be as harsh as truth and as 
uncompromising as justice. ... I am in 
earnest, — I will not equivocate, — I will not 
excuse, — I will not retract a single inch, — 
and I will be heard." His battle cry was 
'' Immediate, unconditional emancipation on 
the soil." 

No movement that wrought so great a na- 
tional convulsion ever had a more feeble ori- 
gin. The Eevolutionary fathers had three 
million colonists as supporters. The leaders 
of the Home Eule movement had four mil- 
lions of Irishmen to back them. Cobden and 
Bright were supported and cheered on by 
the manufacturers of Central England. But 
young Garrison stood alone, with empty 
hands, a slave boy to support, a hand-press 
printing a sheet twelve inches square, never 
knowing where the money for the next edi- 
tion was to come from. His motto was 
7i 



Garrison and Phillips 

" Our country is the world, and our country- 
men all men, black or white." The genius of 
his message was unmistakable: "Is slavery 
wrong anywhere ? Then it is wrong every- 
where. Was it wrong once in Palestine ? 
Then it is wrong in all lands. Is a wrong- 
doer bound to do right at any time ? Then 
he is bound to do right instantly." He dis- 
tributed his sheets among the merchants of 
Boston. Beacon Street shook with laughter, 
for a new Don Quixote had arisen. But 
from the first the South was alarmed, for 
that little sheet from the printing-press fell 
upon the South like the stroke and tread of 
armed men. 

The Liberator soon brought friends to this 
unlmown youth. But in August of this same 
year, 1831, an event occurred wnich lifted 
Garrison, — almost without his being aware 
of it, — into truly national prominence. This 
was the Xat Turner rebellion in Virginia, — a 
negro uprising under the leadership of a 
genuine African slave who knew the Bible 
by heart, who claimed to have communica- 
tion with the Holy Spirit, and who finally 
employed an eclipse of the sun as a sign to 
his followers that the}^ were to arise and 
slay their masters. The massacre which re- 
72 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

suited lasted forty-eight hours, and sixty-one 
white people on the neighbouring planta- 
tions lost their lives. Retribution followed 
swiftly, and where the slightest suspicion of 
guilt w^as to be found, negroes were shot at 
sight or burned against the nearest tree. 
Southampton County saw a veritable reign 
of terror. A storm of indignation sw^ept 
over the South ; thousands of slave owners 
living on their great estates, miles from the 
nearest military station, feared themselves 
victims of a servile insurrection. The cause 
of the uprising was at once sought for, and 
a hundred writers laid the blame at the door 
of the Boston Liberator. Garrison was in- 
dicted for felony in ^North Carolina. The 
legislature of Georgia offered a reward for 
$5,000 to any one who would kidnap him 
and deliver his body within the limits of the 
state. With one voice the entire South cried 
out that the Liberator must be suppressed. 

Later it became clear that Garrison's part 
in the Nat Turner rebellion w^as nil. The 
Liberator had not a single subscriber in the 
South ; Nat Turner had never seen a copy of 
the paper, — and Garrison had been specific 
in his statements that he did not believe in 
active resistance to authority, or in the use 
73 



Garrison and Phillips 

of force of any kind. But the storm had 
broken, and Garrison had to fight his way 
through it. 

Even in Boston Garrison had to face the 
mob, and meet the scorn of the ruling classes 
of the city. His movement had no popular 
support, in the true sense of the word, as it 
had twenty years later, when Wendell Phillips 
led the forces of abolition. Cotton was king, 
and the fear of losing the Southern trade 
sent the mercantile classes into a panic of fear. 
Garrison's enemies were by no means con- 
fined to the South. He was like David 
with his sling ; and slavery, with all its vas- 
sals, North as well as South, was Goliath 
armed with steel. But for Garrison there 
were only two words, Eight and Wrong, and 
he would not compromise concerning either. 

Within two years he succeeded in organ- 
izing in Philadelphia the American Anti- 
Slavery Society ; by 1835 he convinced Will- 
iam Ellery Channing that the time had fully 
come for an active crusade, and this old min- 
ister, with a literary reputation in Europe al- 
most as great as that of Washington Irving, 
published an abolition book called "Slavery," 
which is said to have been read by every 
prominent man in public life. In 18-iO the 
74 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

society numbered not less than 200,000, and 
the hardest of Garrison's work was done. 

But he was to have a potent ally in "Wendell 
Phillips, the explanation of whose career is in 
his birth gifts. One of his ancestors was a 
Cambridge graduate, who rebelled against 
the tyranny of Charles, and exchanged 
wealth and position for a New England 
wilderness. It was one of his forefathers 
who was the first mayor of Boston. An- 
other founded Phillips Exeter Academy. 
Wendell Phillips himself began his career at 
the moment when Madison's State Papers 
had w^on him the presidency, when John 
Adams was the glory of the city, when 
Channing was the light of the pulpit, and 
Lyman Beecher was the idol of orthodox 
Boston. He was in his early teens when he 
waited four hours on a Boston wharf to see 
Lafayette's boat come in. He was thirteen 
when he heard Daniel Webster's oration on 
Adams and Jefferson. He was sixteen when 
he entered Harvard College, and formed 
his lifelong friendship with his roommate, 
John Lothrop Motley. He studied law with 
Charles Sumner, in the office of Judge Story, 
a legal star of the first magnitude. He was 
counted one of the handsomest youths in Bos- 
75 



Garrison and Phillips 

ton. There was nothing too bright or too 
hard for Wendell Phillips to aspire to, or hope 
for. At the critical moment, when he had to 
decide upon his future career, ambition sang 
to him, as to every noble youth. George 
William Curtis represents Phillips as some- 
times forecasting the future, as he saw himself 
*' succeeding Ames, and Otis and Webster, 
rising from the bar to the Legislature, from 
the Legislature to the Senate, from the Senate 
— who knows whither ? He was already the 
idol of society, the applauded orator, the 
brilliant champion of the eloquent refine- 
ment and the conservatism of Massachusetts. 
The delight of social ease, the refined enjoy- 
ment of taste and letters and art, opulence, 
leisure, professional distinction, gratified am- 
bition, all offered bribes to the young stu- 
dent." The measure of his manhood is in the 
way he thrust aside all honours and emolu- 
ments that stood in the path of duty. Only 
he who knows what he renounces gains the 
true blessing of renunciation. 

The young orator's attitude towards slavery 
was determined by the mobbing of Garrison. 
One October afternoon in 1S35 Wendell Phil- 
lips sat reading by an open window in his 
office on Court Street. Suddenly his atten- 
76 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

tion was diverted from the page by voices, 
angry and profane, rising from the street 
without. Looking down he saw a multitude 
moving up the street, and soon found that 
the multitude had become a mob. Five 
thousand men were collected in front of the 
anti-slavery office, and were trying to crowd 
their way up the stairs in search of Garrison. 
In another room thirty women were assem- 
bled to organize a woman's abolition society. 
When the women found that the mob wanted 
to put them out also, they sent a message to 
Mayor Lyman asking protection. When the 
mayor arrived with the police, instead of dis- 
pelling the mob and protecting liberty of 
speech, the mayor dispelled the women and 
protected the mob. Discovering that they 
had the sympathy of the mayor and would 
be protected by the police, the lawless ele- 
ment rushed upon the office of the Liberator^ 
smashed in the doors and windows, and 
dragged Garrison forth. Bareheaded, with 
a rope about his waist, his coat torn off, but 
with erect head, set lips, flashing eyes. Gar- 
rison was dragged down the street to the 
City Hall. On every side rose the shout 
" Kill him ! Lynch him ! the aboli- 
tionist ! " Asking who the man was, Phillips 
17 



Garrison and Phillips 

was told that this was Garrison, the editor 
of the Liberator. Meeting the commander 
of the Boston regiment, of which he was a 
member, he exclaimed, " Why does not the 
mayor call out the troops? This is out- 
rageous ! " " Why," answered the officer, 
"don't you see that our militia are also 
the mob ? " It was all too true. The mob 
was made up of men of property and 
standing. In that hour Wendell Phillips 
had his call. In the person of that man 
dragged down the street with a rope around 
his waist, the most gifted speaker in Boston 
had found his client ; in the crusade against 
slavery he found his cause, and soon his 
clarion voice was heard sounding the onset. 

To Garrison's organized agitation, begun in 
1832, that soon spread all over the country, 
must be added a second cause for anti-slavery 
sentiment, — the murder of Lovejoy. This 
was on the night of November 7, 1837. The 
Eev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was a young Presby- 
terian minister, a graduate of Princeton 
Seminary. He began his career as pastor of 
a little church in St. Louis and editor of the 
PresbyUrian Observer. At that time he was 
not an abolitionist, and, perhaps because he 
had married the daughter of a slave owner, 

78 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

he had taken no strong position either for or 
against slavery. One day an oflScer arrested 
a black man in St. Louis who resisted arrest, 
and in the melee the officer was killed. His 
fiiends claimed that the negro was a freeman, 
and that there was a plot to kidnap him and 
sell him into the Southern cotton fields, and 
that he had a right to resist. The real facts 
will, doubtless, never be known. To slave 
owners, however, it was intolerable that a 
black man should resist an officer under any 
circumstances. A mob collected, the negro 
was bound to a stake, wood piled round 
about, and the prisoner was burned to 
death. 

Efforts were made to punish the mur- 
derers. In the irony of events the name of 
the judge was Lawless, and he charged the 
grand jury substantially as follows : " When 
men are hurried by some mysterious meta- 
physical electric frenzy to commit a deed of 
violence they are absolved from guilt. If 
you should find that such was the fact in this 
case, then act not at all. The case transcends 
your jurisdiction, and is beyond the reach of 
human law." Of course all the murderers 
went free. When Mr. Lovejoy commented 
editorially upon this outrageous charge, en- 
79 



Garrison and Phillips 

couraging lynch law, once again the " mys- 
terious, metaphysical electric frenzy " broke 
forth, only this tune it destroyed his printing 
office. The young minister decided to leave 
the slave State, and crossed to Alton, Illinois, 
where there was not only liberty of speech 
but liberty of the printing-press. But a mob 
crossed over from Missouri and destroyed 
his press. Determined to maintain his rights, 
Lovejoy then brought another press down the 
Ohio Kiver from Cincinnati. A group of his 
friends carried the type from the steamboat 
to the warehouse, but the next night a sec- 
ond mob collected, and when Lovejoy stepped 
from the building he was riddled with bul- 
lets, the warehouse burned, and the press, for 
the third time, flung into the Mississippi. 
The news of this murder aroused the conti- 
nent, filling the South with exultation, and 
the North with alarm. Slavery, a subject 
which had long been tabooed, suddenly be- 
came the one topic of conversation in the 
home, the store, the street-car. All editors 
wrote about it ; all Northern pulpits began 
to preach on the subject. More faggots had 
been flung upon the fire, and oil added to 
the fierce flames. 
Every explosion asks for powder, but also 
80 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

a spark. Falling on ice, a spark is Impotent, 
falling on powder, an explosion is inevi- 
table. Wendell Phillips had already been 
aroused to sympathy with Garrison and 
hatred of slavery, and news of the murder of 
Love joy fell upon his heart like a spark on a 
powder magazine. When Boston heard that 
Lovejoy had been shot by the mob in Alton, 
Illinois, while defending his printing-press, 
the leading men of Boston came together 
in Faneuil Hall. William EUery Channing 
made the opening address, and asked that 
the meeting go on record through an indig- 
nant protest against this assault upon the 
rights of free citizens. James T. Austin, 
attorney-general of the commonwealth, re- 
plied in a bitter and insulting reference to 
Channing, asserting that a clergyman with a 
gun in his hand, or mingling in the debate 
of a popular assembly in Faneuil Hall, was 
marvellously out of place. Austin compared 
the slaves of the South to a menagerie of 
wild beasts, and asserted that Lovejoy in 
defending them was presumptuous, and died 
as a fool dieth. He added that the rioters 
in Alton killed Lovejoy and flung his press 
into the river in the spirit of the Boston 
mob that boarded the British ships in 1773, 
8i 



Garrison and Phillips 

and threw the tea overboard on the night of 
the " Boston Tea Party." 

That was a great moment in the his- 
tory not only of liberty, but also in that of 
eloquence. Wendell Phillips, then but six 
years out of Harvard College, rose to reply. 
" A comparison has been drawn between the 
events of the Kevolution and the tragedy at 
Alton. We have heard it asserted here in 
Faneuil Hall that Great Britain had a right 
to tax the colonies. And we have heard the 
mob at Alton, drunken murderers of Lovejoy, 
compared to those patriot fathers who threw 
the tea overboard ! Fellow citizens, is this 
Faneuil Hall doctrine ? The mob at Alton 
were inet to wrest from a citizen his just 
rights, — met to resist the laws. Lovejoy had 
stationed himself within constitutional bul- 
warks. He was not only defending the 
freedom of the press, but he was under his 
own roof, in arms with the sanction of the 
civil authority. The men who assailed him 
went against and over the laws. The mob, 
as the gentleman terms it (mob, forsooth ! 
— certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are 
a marvellously patient generation !), the 
' orderly mob ' which assembled in the Old 
South to destroy the tea were met to resist, 

S2 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

not the laws, but illegal exactions. Shame 
on the American who calls the tea tax and 
Stamp Act laws ! Our fathers resisted, not 
the king's prerogative, but the king's usurpa- 
tion. To find any other account you must 
read our revolutionary history upside down. 
To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a 
precedent for mobs is an insult to their 
memory. They were the people rising to 
sustain the laws and constitution of the 
province. The rioters of our day go for 
their own Avills, right or wrong. Sir, when 
I heard the gentleman lay down principles 
which place the murderers of Alton side by 
side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy 
and Adams, I thought those pictured lips 
[pointing to the portraits in the hall] would 
have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant 
American, — the slanderer of the dead. Sir, 
for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil 
consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and 
the blood of patriots, the earth should have 
yawned and swallowed him up. Imprudent 
to defend the liberty of the press ! Why ? 
Because the defense was unsuccessful ? Does 
success gild crime into patriotism, and the 
want of it change heroic self-devotion into 
imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent 

83 



Garrison and Phillips 

when he drew the sword and threw away 
the scabbard ? " 

The next morning young Phillips, like 
Lord B}T:on, awoke to find himself famous. 
Merchants, politicians, who had long been 
staggering like drunken men, indifferent to 
their rights, and confused in their feelings, 
were stunned into sobriety, and began to 
discuss principles, and weigh characters, and 
analyze public leaders, and wakening, men 
found that they had been standing on the 
edge of a precipice. Phillips, already de- 
voted to the slave, became now his tireless 
champion through many years, till the eman- 
cipation of 1S63. 

One evening in May, 1854, a negro was 
seen skulking in the shadows near a dock 
in Boston. This coloured man, Anthony 
Burns by name, was a slave, who had escaped 
from his Southern master, and after weeks 
had reached Philadelphia, where a Quaker 
had stowed him away in a ship bound for 
Boston. A Boston policeman who caught 
sight of the negro recalled the rewards of- 
fered for the capture of slaves, and soon ran 
the fugitive down, and had him before 
United States Commissioner Loring. The 
next morning Theodore Parker hastened to 
84 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

the court-room to say that he was the 
chaplain of the Abolition Society, and had 
come to offer counsel. But the fugitive was 
afraid to accept the overture, lest his master 
punish him the more severely. 

The news spread quickly throughout the 
city, and two nights later a meeting in 
Faneuii Hall was attended by an enormous 
gathering, aroused to the highest pitch of 
excitement. Hand-bills had been put out, 
stating that kidnappers were in the city. 
The people were in a frenzy. Theodore 
Parker delivered one of his most impassioned 
addresses. " I am ain old man ; I have heard 
hurrahs and cheers for liberty many times ; 
I have not seen a great many deeds done for 
liberty. I ask you. Are we to have deeds 
as well as words ? " Parker moved that, 
when the meeting adjourned, it should be to 
meet the following morning in the square 
before the court-house. But he had raised 
too great a storm to control ; a rumour that 
a mob of negroes was at that very moment 
trying to rescue Burns was all that was 
needed to empty the room ; and the crowd 
rushed out to the court-house square. There 
they discovered a small party of men, led by 
Thomas W. Higginson, trying to batter 
85 



Garrison and Phillips 

down the court-house doors. The crowd 
lent them willing hands. But the marshall 
defended the building,— shots were fired, 
— Hio:o:inson wounded, and several of his 
followers arrested. Two companies of ar- 
tillery were at once ordered out by the 
mayor, and the attempt to rescue the negro 
met with complete and disastrous failure. 
Wendell Phillips and Parker were the 
leaders in the fight. When asked what he 
would regard as grounds for the return of 
Burns to his master, Phillips answered, 
*' Nothing short of a bill of sale from Al- 
mighty God." 

The day of the transfer of the slave to 
the United States revenue cutter found Bos- 
ton in a state of siege. Twenty -two com- 
panies of Massachusetts soldiers patrolled 
the city ; two rows of soldiers, armed with 
muskets, shotted to kill, stood on either side 
of the street through which Burns was to 
be led to the vessel. The windows were 
filled with people, the houses hung in black, 
the United States flags were draped in 
mourning. From a window near the court- 
house hung a coffin, with the legend : " The 
funeral of liberty." The procession itself 
was composed of a battalion of United States 
86 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

artillery, one of United States marines, the 
marshall's posse of 125 men guarding the 
f uo:itive, and a small cannon, with two more 
platoons of marines to guard it. To such a 
pass had come Boston, with its respect for 
law, and its reputation for obedience to those 
clothed in authority. A Charleston paper 
spoke of the return of Burns as a Southern 
victory, but added that two or three such 
victories would ruin the cause. For the 
movement against slavery was now rising, 
with all the advance of a tidal wave and a 
mighty storm. 

The public excitement was greatly in- 
creased by the Fugitive Slave legislation of 
1850 and 1851:. Many IS'orthern men who 
were opposed to slavery in the Xorth con- 
doned slavery in the South. Just as De- 
metrius urged that by the making of images 
of Diana " we have our gain," so timid cap- 
ital in the Korth bowed like a suitor at 
the feet of the imperial South, and advised 
silence, remembering that through the money 
of Southern planters it had its livelihood. 
Wendell Phillips went up and down the land 
stirring up opinion against the law. He spoke 
three hundred times in one year and two 
hundred and seventy-five times in another 
8/ 



Garrison and Phillips 

year. Phillips rose upon the opposition like 
a war eagle against an advancmg storm. 
Brave men defied the law, organized the 
Underground Eailroad, and in every way 
possible defeated the purpose of the Fugitive 
Slave Law. So in 1854 when Senator Doug- 
las engineered thi'ough Congress the famous 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, repealing the Missouri 
Compromise, the ISTorth refused to accept 
what was so palpably pro-slavery legislation. 
This was revolutionary. Instantly the ISTorth 
divided into two camps. The one question 
of the hour was " Shall a fugitive slave be 
furnished with weapons with which to de- 
fend his person, and has he the right of 
self-defense?" The whole land became a 
debating society, and heaved with excite- 
ment, like the heaving of an earthquake. 
The merchant pointed to his ledger, and 
urged caution. But liberty was stronger 
than the ledger, and the heaving emotion 
burst through the statutes and rent the laws 
asunder. Soon the Fugitive Slave Law had 
become a dead letter. The South had gone 
one step too far. Abolition stood suddenly in 
a new light ; " More abolitionists had been 
made by this single piece of hostile leg- 
islation," said Greeley, "than Garrison 
88 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

and Phillips could have made in half a 
century." 

For thirty years Wendell Phillips was 
the crowned king of the lecture platform. 
It was the golden age of the lyceum. Men 
had more leisure than to-day. Our era of 
the drama, music, and travel pictures had 
not yet come. The winter nights were long, 
books few, magazines had not yet developed, 
and the people were hungry for instruction 
and eloquence. Wendell Phillips achieved 
the astonishing feat of speaking three hun- 
dred times a year. Eloquence is born of 
a great theme like the woes and wrongs of 
three million slaves. It is sometimes said 
that oratory is dying out in our Congress. 
But Congress is now a board of trade, dis- 
cussing duties, protective tariffs on wool, 
cotton, and hides. Beecher and Phillips had 
a great theme — liberty, the emancipation of 
millions of slaves. The modern orator in the 
Senate discusses the mathematics of woolen 
goods. It is hard to be eloquent over one 
salt barrel and two piles of cowhides. A 
sermon or a lecture on topics that fifty 
years ago would have crowded the greatest 
room and the street outside would not to-day 
draw a corporal's guard. 

89 



Garrison and Phillips 

But in those heroic days, there "was a 
great opportunity, and the opportunity was 
matched by the man. Phillips was hand- 
some as an Apollo. His voice was sweet as 
a harp. 'No man ever studied the art of 
public speech more scientifically. He played 
upon an audience as a skillful musician upon 
the banks of keys in an organ. A Southern 
slaveholder heard him in the Academy of 
Music, hating him, but paying him this 
tribute, " That man is an infernal machine 
set to music." His method was practically 
the memoriter method. A gentleman, who 
heard him give his '' Daniel O'Connell " four 
times in succession, found that the lectm^e was 
repeated without the slightest variation what- 
soever, in ideas, sentences, inflection of the 
voice, or even gesture. Phillips prepared his 
lectures with the greatest care, and then re- 
peated them hundreds of times. From the 
moment when he came upon the platform his 
presence filled the eye and satisfied it. His 
very ease and poise begat confidence and de- 
light. He carved each sentence out of solid 
sunshine. He stood quietly, made few ges- 
tures, adopted the conversational tone and 
took the audience into his confidence. 

Some of his finest effects were produced 
90 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

by the injection of a parenthesis. Once in an 
evening sermon in Plymouth Church, when 
Beecher was urging the reelection of Lincoln 
and defending the Eepublican party, a dis- 
putatious individual called out from the con- 
gregation, " "What about Wendell Phillips ? " 
To which Mr. Beecher made the instant an- 
swer, *' Wendell Phillips is not a Eepub- 
lican. Wendell Phillips is a radical and an 
independent. What this country needs is 
not a man of words but a man of deeds." A 
few nights later Wendell Phillips was lectur- 
ing m the Brooklyn Academy of Music be- 
fore the St. Patrick's Society, and made his 
reply in the form of a parenthesis, barbing 
his shaft with an exquisite inflection of his 
voice. " Mr. Beecher said last Sunday night 
{forgetting his own vocation)^ ' Wendell Phil- 
lips is a man of words, instead of a man of 

deeds.' " 

Kot that the two men were ever unfriendly, 
for they were co-workers, standing side by 
side in the great movement. Once when the 
trustees of yonder Academy refused to allow 
Mr. Phillips to speak, Mr. Beecher made it a 
point of honour with his trustees to let Wen- 
dell Phillips speak in Plymouth Church, and 
ran the risk of the mob destroying the build- 
91 



Garrison and Phillips 

ing. The tumultuous scenes of that night, 
when bricks came through the windows, 
and the police were stationed in Cranberry 
and Orange Streets, were repeated all over 
the land. Again and again Wendell Phillips 
was mobbed. Once, at the very beginning 
of his career as an abolitionist, he spoke with 
an old Quaker. People waited to greet the 
old Quaker and asked him home for the 
night; but they pelted Wendell Phillips 
with rotten eggs as he went down the street 
in the dark. Afterwards Wendell Phillips 
said to the old Quaker, " I said just what 
you did, and yet you were invited home to 
fried chicken and a bed, while I received 
raw eggs and stone." 

*' I will tell thee the difference, Wendell. 
Thou said, ' If thou art a holder of slaves, 
thou wilt go to hell.' I said, ^If thou dost 
not hold slaves, thou wilt not go to hell.' " 

But Wendell Phillips would not butter 
parsnips with fine words. Once in Boston 
four hundred men surrounded him, got pos- 
session of the hall, and jeered him for an 
hour and a half. Finally he leaned over the 
desk and shouted down to a reporter, 
" Thank God there is no manacle for 
the printing-press." Armed friends rescued 
92 



Anti-Slavery Agitation 

him, guarded him home, and for a week, 
night and day, the Boston police guarded 
the house. Those were tumultuous days. 
But this great man braved and outlived the 
storm. 

When the Emancipation Proclamation 
was declared, William Lloyd Garrison said 
nothing remained now but to die. But 
Phillips opposed the dissolution of the Anti- 
Slavery Society, because he saw that when 
the physical fetters were broken, there still 
remained the fetters of the mind and heart 
that must be destroyed. So far from ending 
his labours, Phillips now redoubled his ac- 
tivities. He threw himself into the labour 
movement and helped organize the working 
classes into a solid force against capitalism. 
He took up the cause of suffrage and the 
higher education of woman, gave himself 
to the temperance problem and prohibition. 
He lectured oftentimes two hundred nights 
a year in the great cities of the land, seeking 
always to manufacture manhood of a good 
quality. He became himself our finest ex- 
ample of the power and influence of the 
scholar in the Kepublic. And when the end 
came, he received from his fellow country- 
men the admiration and the love that he had 
93 



Garrison and Phillips 

deserved. And the friends who knew him 
best were not surprised that the last words 
on his lips were the words of his friend 
James Eussell Lowell, that summarized the 
ideal that Wendell Phillips had pursued for 
thirty years. 

'' New occasioDS teach new duties ; Time makes 

ancient good uncouth ; 
They must upward still, and onward, who 

would keep abreast of Truth ; 
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we 

ourselves must Pilgrims be, 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 

through the desperate winter sea, 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the 

Past's blood-rusted key.'^ 



94 



IV 



CHAELES SUMNER : THE APPEAL TO 
EDUCATED MEN 

IN every country and time, the era of na- 
tional peril has been the creative era for 
the intellect. The eloquence of Greece was 
at its best when Philip attacked Athens and 
Demosthenes defended its liberties. Dante's 
poems were born of the collision between the 
despots who sought to enslave Florence, and 
the patriots who dreamed of democracy. 
Milton's songs were written during the 
English Revolution, when the Puritan, seek- 
ing to diffuse the good things of life, and the 
Cavalier, who wished to monopolize the 
earth's treasure, came into a deadly col- 
lision. 

In accordance with that principle it seems 
natural to expect that the scholars of the 
Republic should do their best work during 
the era of agitation, when the national intel- 
lect was white hot, and public excitement 
burned by day and night. The anti-slavery 
95 



Charles Sumner 

epoch, therefore, was the Augustan Era of 
American literature, when the historians, 
poets and philosophers lent distinction to 
American literature. At that time Motley 
was writing his " History of the Nether- 
lands " ; Prescott, his " History of Mexico 
and Spain " ; Whit tier, his songs of slavery 
and freedom ; Lowell was the satuist of the 
debate, and was writing his " Biglow Papers," 
and Emerson, the philosopher, was undermin- 
ing the foundations and shaking the prin- 
ciples of slavery, even as Samson pulled down 
the temple of the olden time. 

Emerson, the philosopher, did the think- 
ing, and furnished the intellectual imple- 
ments to the abolitionists. Beginning his 
career as a preacher, he resigned his position, 
moved to Concord, and dwelt apart from 
men, but ''as he mused, the fire burned." 
Easily our first man of American letters, he 
is among the first essayists of all ages and 
climes. Essentially, however, he was a man 
of intellect, an American Plato, "a Greek 
head screwed upon Yankee shoulders," to use 
Holmes' expression. His essay upon " The 
American Scholar," and his book on "Na- 
ture," brought him fame in England, and in\d- 
tations to lecture before their colleges. Early 
96 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

in his career he won the friendship of Arnold 
of Kugby, of Matthew Arnold the son, of 
Arthur Hugh Clough, and of Thomas Car- 
lyle. He returned from his honours in Eng- 
land to find himself the centre of the intel- 
lectual movement of New England. A num- 
ber of younger men gathered around him, 
until Emerson's group at Concord became 
like unto Goethe's group at Weimar, and Cole- 
ridge's in London. During the late forties 
American educators, orators and statesmen 
began to quote the striking sentences from 
Emerson. Little by little it came about that 
the fighters went to Emerson as to an 
arsenal for their intellectual weapons. His 
first notable contribution to abolitionism 
was his " Story of the West India Emanci- 
pation." Then came his "Essay on the 
Fugitive Slave Law," his speech on the As- 
sault on Mr. Sumner, his writings on Kan- 
sas, and on John Brown. Few men have 
had such power to condense a statement 
of philosophy into a single epigram. Grant 
once said of his soldiers that while each 
man took aim for himself, Winchester slew 
all the thousands. Not otherwise, hundreds 
of orators and reformers went up and down 
the land attacking slavery, but while the 
97 



Charles Sumner 

voices were many, the argument was one, 
and Emerson for a time did the speaking for 
the abolitionists. 

What Emerson stated in pure white light, 
Whittier made popular through his poems of 
Slavery and Freedom. By way of pre- 
eminence he was the poet of the abolition 
movement, and the Sir Galahad among our 
singers. Beared among the Friends, he had 
the simplicity of the Quaker, but the solidity 
and massiveness of the fighting Puritan. 
Strange as it may seem, he was at once the 
poet of peace, insisting upon the crime of 
war, and the poet of freedom, insisting upon 
the destruction of slavery. The fire and 
glow, the moral earnestness, the spiritual 
passion of "Whittier, are best illustrated in his 
'' Lost Occasion," and " Ichabod." At length 
the newspapers of the Korth took up his 
work. For some years before the war broke 
out, scarcely a month passed by without a 
new poem of liberty by Whittier. Soon these 
poems that were published in the newspa- 
pers were recited in the schools by the chil- 
dren, quoted in the pulpits by the preachers, 
and used by the orators as feathers for their 
arrows. Once Wendell Phillips concluded an 
impassioned oration by reciting one of Whit- 
98 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

tier's stanzas, when a man in the audience 
shouted, " That arrow went home ! " to which 
Wendell Phillips answered, " Yes, and I have 
a quiver full of arrows, every one of which 
was made by a man of peace, — John Green- 
leaf Whittier." If Emerson's philosophy was 
like the diffused white daylight that makes 
clear the landscape for an army, Whittier's 
occasional poems like *' Ichabod " were thun- 
derbolts that blasted forever all compromise 
and expediency. 

Sometimes what the essayist fails to achieve 
ridicule easily accomplishes. James Kussell 
Lowell was the satirist of the abolition 
movement. With biting scorn and irony he 
laughed men out of narrowness, ignorance, 
and selfishness. During the last epoch in his 
career Lowell achieved world-wide fame as 
a diplomat, and was universally admired as 
the all round man of letters. But now that 
he has gone, in retrospect, the historian per- 
ceives that the first era of Lowell's career 
was the influential era. He was the Milton 
of the anti-slavery epoch, as Lincoln was its 
Cromwell. His influence in England, in de- 
veloping an anti-slavery sentiment there, was, 
if possible, more influential than in the home 
country. The great English editor, William 
99 



Charles Sumner 

Stead, tells us that he owes to Lo\yeirs mes- 
sage the uifluences that made him an editor 
and a reformer. In the critical moments of 
his life he found in Lowell the inspu-ation 
and support that he found in no other books, 
save in Carlyle's " Cromwell " and the Bible. 
" In Russia, in Ireland, in Rome, and in prison, 
Lowell's poems have been my constant com- 
panions." The poet used the story of Moses 
emancipating the Hebrew slaves as an illus- 
tration of the abolitionist as the unknown 
leader whom God would raise up to lead the 
three million black men out of Southern 
slavery. What God did for the Egyptian 
bondsmen, he believed God would do; be- 
cause what God was, God is. He goes on : — 
" From what a Bible can a man choose his 
text to-day ! A Bible which needs no trans- 
lation; and which no priestcraft can close 
from the laity,— the open volume of the 
world, upon which, with a pen of sunshine 
and destroying fire, the inspired Present is 
even noAV writing the annals of God. Me- 
thinks the editor who should understand his 
calling, and be equal thereto, would truly 
deserve that title that Homer bestows upon 
princes. He would be the Moses of our 
nineteenth century; and whereas the old 

100 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

Sinai, silent now, is but a common mountain, 
stared at by the elegant tourist, and crawled 
over by the hammer of the geologist, he 
must find his tables of the new law here 
among factories and cities in this wilderness 
of sin, called the progress of civilization, and 
be the captain of our exodus into the Canaan 
of a truer social order." 

Certain stanzas of Lowell, also, were quoted 
even more widely, and were ever upon the 
lips of college students. Many a soldier boy 
who went to battle from the forest and 
factory, the fields and the mines, scarcely 
knew that his inspiration — like Phillip's 
oratory— was embodied in Lowell's poem, 
" The Present Crisis " :— 

'' Once to every man and nation comes the 
moment to decide, 

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for 
the good or evil side ; 

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offer- 
ing each the bloom or blight, 

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the 
sheep upon the right, 

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that 
darkness and that light. 

'* Careless seems the great Avenger ; history's 
pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old 
systems and the Word ; 
loi 



Charles Sumner 

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever 
on the throne, — 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, be- 
hind the dim unknown, 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping 
watch above His own.'^ 



Then came Charles Sumner, the scholar in 
politics, to make practical the student's mes- 
sage. Daniel Webster's defense of Massachu- 
setts in his reply to Hayne, and his wonderful 
eloquence in the years which followed that 
first great address, lifted the old Bay State 
into unique preeminence in the Senate : when, 
therefore, Webster left the Senate and en- 
tered the cabinet of Millard Fillmore, the 
North and the South alike asked, with in- 
tense interest, who should succeed the de- 
fender of the Constitution. That no dramatic 
interest might be lacking when, in 1S51, 
Charles Sumner entered the Senate chamber 
to take the oath of office, it came about that 
Henry Clay, the great Compromiser, left the 
Senate, going out at one door, on the very 
day that Conscience, in the person of this Pur- 
itan, entered it by the other door. John C. 
Calhoun, inflexible, iron to the end, adhering 
tenaciously to his doctrine of secession, had 
just died, quite unconscious of the fact that 

102 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

his speeches held the explosives that were to 
shatter the South and destroy half a million 
of his beloved people. Clay, too, was death- 
stricken, and with great pathos referred to 
himself as " a stag scarred by spears, worried 
by wounds, dragging his mutilated body to 
his lair to lie down and die." "Webster was 
now gray and broken, with the shadow of 
the eclipse already drawing near. In such 
a moment Charles Sumner began his career 
by an appeal to the " everlasting yea " and 
the " everlasting nay." — " I desire to speak 
to-day of some laws greater than any passed 
in this capital or this country; older than 
America, older than India — I mean the laws 
of God." 

Hitherto slavery had been the aggressor, 
crowding into Texas, edging into Missouri, 
with bullets forcing its way into Kansas. 
Freedom had always been on the defensive. 
Now all was changed, with the coming of a 
man whose watchword was '' Slavery must 
be destroyed ; liberty must be preserved." 
That cold body called the Senate became 
immediately conscious of the new influence 
that entered into the very being of the gov- 
ernment, like iron into the rich blood of the 
physical system. Charles Sumner made it 
103 



Charles Sumner 

clear from the beginning that the movement 
against slavery was from the Everlasting 
Arm. With expediency he had nothing to 
do, but only with eternal right and eternal 
wrong. One day Daniel Webster reminded 
his young successor of the importance of 
looking on the other side, indicatmg that a 
shield that was gold on one side might at 
least be silver on the other, to which Sum- 
ner replied, " There is no other side." This 
Boston scholar became a voice for law, 
" whose seat is the bosom of God, and whose 
speech is the melody of the world." These 
eternal laws of God rose up to stay the prog- 
ress of slavery like the beetling granite cliffs 
of Maine, that send forth their voice to the 
onrushing tides, saying, " Here stay your 
proud waves -thus far, and no farther." 

Ancestry, opportunity and events all con- 
spired to equip Charles Sumner with those 
implements that make man great. Like 
Phillips, he was a descendant of the early 
settlers of Boston. His father led the men 
who delivered Garrison out of the hands of 
the mob, and who told the excited populace 
that unless Boston was careful "our chil- 
dren's heads will be broken by cannon-balls." 
The plastic, critical hours of his youth were 
104 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

spent in Harvard College and in the law 
office of Judge Story. Never interested in 
philosophy and metaphysics, he was surpassed 
by few as a master of the humanities, gen- 
eral literatm^e, and the story of the rise and 
progress of democracy and free institutions. 
Kot a man of genius, Charles Sumner was 
gifted with talent of a very high order. 
He had, what is perhaps better than genius, 
a capacity for sustauied labour and prodig- 
ious industry. He did nothing by halves. 
In his chosen realm he became a master of 
the details of every movement related to 
free institutions, since the days of the repub- 
lics of Greece and Switzerland, Holland and 
England. Long after other students had 
blown out theu^ lights, Charles Sumner's 
window was still flaming. At a very early 
epoch he exhibited his tenacity of will and 
his constitutional inability to change his 
mind. Once he planned with a companion 
to walk to Boston on Satm^day mornmg, 
starting at half-past seven. When the horn- 
struck, a snow-storm was raging. But hav- 
ing decided to go to Boston, to Boston the 
student went alone, floundering through the 
blizzard. Snowdrifts were little things, but 
changing his plan was an impossible thing. 
105 



Charles Sumner 

The centre of his character, about which all 
else revolved, was a certain axis of pride and 
self-esteem, which may be pardoned, per- 
haps, in view of the fact that the world 
takes a man largely upon his own estimate 
of personal worth. 

In those days the atmosphere of Boston 
was charged with enthusiasm for education 
and the humanities. Among young Sum- 
ner's friends were Prescott, who was writing 
the history of Spain and Mexico ; Bancroft, 
who was outlining his history of the United 
States ; Story, the jurist ; Horace Mann, the 
educator; Dr. Howe, the father of the 
movement for the education of the deaf and 
dumb ; Emerson, Longfellow, Channing and 
Whittier — all were not simply friends but 
correspondents of Charles Sumner. 

Nor must we forget the Boston of earlier 
days, the Boston of Adams, and Otis, of 
Warren and Qaincy. In such a city, sur- 
rounded by the noblest traditions of pa- 
triotism, stimulated by the greatest group of 
scholars that the Republic has produced, 
Charles Sumner passed his early manhood. 
Then, remembering that Edward Everett 
had fitted himself for his work in Harvard 
University by four years abroad, Sunmer, in 
io6 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

his twenty-seventh year, went to Europe. 
He spent ^ve months in Germany, where 
the spirits of Goethe, Eiohter and Luther 
lingered upon the scene. In Paris he studied 
French, French art, French literature, 
French philosophy, and finally attended the 
debates in the French Parliament, examining 
the problems with all the care of a member. 
He lingered long in England, where he was 
welcomed and lionized by the foremost men 
of letters, science, philosophy, as well as by 
the leading clergymen and statesmen of 
London. He was an honoured guest not at 
some, but " at most of the country seats of 
England and Scotland." He travelled the 
circuits as the companion of the gi'eatest 
English judges, Yaughan, Parke and Alder- 
son. He met on a familiar footing Macaulay 
and Grote, Carlyle and Jeffrey, Sidney Smith 
and Wordsworth. But his great year was in 
Italy, in the Eternal City, the city of CaBsar 
and Cicero, the city of Horace and Yirgil. 
In all, Sumner spent thirty years in prepara- 
tion for his labour. Few men in American 
politics have had a wider horizon, a better 
equipment in history and literature, or have 
known so intimately all the great men in 
the world of his own generation who were 
107 



Charles Sumner 

worth knowing. He went away to Europe 
an American ; he returned a universal man, 
a citizen of the world. 

Not until 18J:5, when he was thirty-four 
years of age, did a really great opportunity 
come to Sumner. Boston at that far-off day 
made much of the Fourth of July, and 
looked forward to the holiday as the great 
event of the year. During the previous 
autumn the mayor and aldermen of the city 
invited Sumner to deliver the oration. 
Webster made John Adams say, " When we 
are in our graves, our childi^en will celebrate 
the day with song and story, with oration 
and pageant, and the explosion of cannon, 
and greet it with tears of joy and exulta- 
tion." But unfortunately the speeches of 
that time had degenerated into false rhetoric, 
full of insincerity. In his oration, Sumner 
left the beaten track and plunged into an 
unknown way. His theme was the crime of 
war. He attacked his city and his country 
for spending millions upon fortifications in 
the harbour. He affirmed that the best pro- 
tection of a nation was not dead stones but 
living patriots and heroes. He called the 
roll of the great wars of history, and found 
only one or two, like our Ee volution, that 
io8 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

were really justifiable. He defined war as 
the temporary repeal of all the ten com- 
mandments, and an enthronement of all the 
crimes. 

In retrospect we know that Sumner over- 
stated his case. His argument against phys- 
ical force would forbid the police in great 
cities, the militia on the frontier, and would 
leave communities exposed to the ravages of 
brigands on land and pirates by sea. But 
for the most part, Sumner's argument in 
favour of peace was sound. To-day all civi- 
lized countries are coming to recognize war 
as a blunder, since questions of justice cannot 
be settled by brute force. 

When we consider that France is an armed 
camp, Germany and Austria countries of 
bristling bayonets, that three years at the 
most critical epoch of the boy's life are con- 
sumed in a camp exposed to all manner of 
temptations and dangers, at the very time 
when the youth should be mastering his 
trade or his profession, war seems the capi- 
talization of all the possible follies and 
wastes. The peasants of Europe plough, 
each carrying a soldier upon his back. The 
brick-mason builds, but staggers up the ladder 
with a heavier load than bricks, — the soldier 
109 



Charles Sumner 

upon his back. The symbols of nations are 
still the lion, the eagle and the wolf. Some 
political leaders even yet talk about the ne- 
cessity of an occasional war to put boys upon 
their mettle, as if invention, the building of 
railways, the founding of cities, the fighting 
of economic and social wrongs would not 
put a man upon his mettle ! To put a Ger- 
man on one side of a fence and a Frenchman 
on the other, and have one peasant empty 
his shotgun into the bowels of the other is 
about as noble as going out into a yard and 
shooting a Jersey cow. The best way to 
protect a nation is to build boys into men, 
through the processes of productive industry. 
Machine gun and dreadnought will soon be 
as obsolete in the presence of arbitration and 
the court at the Hague as an ox-cart is ob- 
solete in the presence of a Pullman palace car. 
Wendell Phillips once said that Lord 
Bacon had a right to lay his hand on the 
steam engine and say to Watt : '" This en- 
gine is mine ; I gave you the method." So 
Charles Sumner, after sixty-five years, has a 
right to stand yonder at the entrance of the 
Parliament House of Peace, now being com- 
pleted in the capital of Holland, and say: 
" I laid the foundation stones of this struc- 

IIO 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

ture and started a war against war.'^ 
This oration of Sumner's on "The True 
Grandeur of Nations " made him a most un- 
popular figure at home, but Europe soon 
called for his speech. It was translated into 
many languages, two hundred and fifty 
thousand copies were published and sold, 
and for the time Sumner was the most 
talked of man of the year. 

Now the one man Avho was not on the de- 
fensive, who was not content to merely stay 
the forward progress of slavery, but insisted 
on driving it back into the Gulf and ulti- 
mately into the sea, to be drowned forever, 
was Charles Sumner, with his " Carthago est 
delenda." His favourite phrase was " free- 
dom is national, slavery is sectional." Burke 
himself, depicting the sufferings of India, 
scarcely surpassed Sumner's speech on the 
devastation of Kansas by outlaws and guer- 
rillas. Commenting upon the fact that a 
company of armed slave owners had crossed 
the borders at night, and destroyed the 
homes of a group of Northern settlers, Sum- 
ner said : " Border incursions, which in bar- 
barous lands fretted and harried an exposed 
people, are here renewed, with this peculiar- 
ity, that our border robbers do not simply 
III 



Charles Sumner 

levy blackmail and drive off a few cattle, 
they do not seize a few persons and sweep 
them away into captivity, like the African 
slave-traders whom we brand as tyrants, but 
they commit a succession of deeds in which 
border sorrows and African wrongs are re- 
vived together on American soil, while the 
whole territory is enslaved. I do not dwell 
on the anxieties of families exposed to sudden 
assault, and lying down to rest with the 
alarms of war ringing in the ears, not know- 
ing that another day may be spared them. 
Throughout this bitter winter, with the ther- 
mometer thirty degrees below zero, the citi- 
zens of Lawrence have slept under arms, 
with sentinels pacing. In vain do we con- 
demn the cruelties of another age — the re- 
finement of torture, the rack and thumb- 
screw of the Inquisition ; for kindred out- 
rages disgrace these borders. Murder stalks, 
assassination skulks in the tall grass ; where 
a candidate for the Legislature was gashed 
with knives and hatchets, and after welter- 
ing in blood on the snow-clad earth, trundled 
along with gaping wounds to fall dead be- 
fore the face of his wife." 

With speeches like these, Sumner attacked 
slavery. The edge of his argument was keen, 

112 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

but his blows had also the power of sledge- 
hammers, The Southern leaders were in a 
frenzy of anger. Harriet Martineau said of 
the situation that from 1830 to 1850, by gen- 
eral agreement, men in Congress referred to 
slavery under their breath, believing that only 
by silence could the Union be preserved. 
Kow came a man who believed that silence 
was criminal, who would not be bullied, and 
would be heard, who believed m the Golden 
Kule, insisted on the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and who, in the name of freedom 
that was national, wished to destroy the 
Fugitive Slave Law and bring about the 
immediate and unconditional emancipation 
of all slaves on the ground. 

When two opposing gases come together, 
an explosion is inevitable. One day in 1856, 
after the adjournment of the Senate, a 
Southern member of Congress entered the 
Chamber, and finding Sumner seated, with 
his legs under an iron desk screwed to the 
floor, and, therefore, helpless for defense, 
with a heavy walking-stick the assailant beat 
the powerless man into insensibility, two of 
his friends protecting him from those who 
would interfere in his murderous assault. 
Having lost enough blood to soak through 
113 



Charles Sumner 

the carpet and stain the very floor, uncon- 
scious, and hovering between life and death, 
Sumner was carried to a sofa, thence to his 
hotel. From that time on the scholar en- 
dured a living death. He was carried to 
Paris, where Dr. Brown-Sequard tried " the 
fire cure " upon the spine. But for years 
his desk was vacant. Massachusetts in- 
sisted that the empty seat should proclaim 
to the world her abhorrence of the barbarism 
that, unequal to intellectual debate, betakes 
itself to clubs and murder. Later on Sum- 
ner did return to his seat, but he was broken 
in health, and to the end was tortured with 
pain. Nevertheless, despite all the physical 
distresses, he remained the Puritan in politics, 
adhering inflexibly to his old ideals of liberty. 
The great lesson of Sumner's life is the im- 
portance of fidelity to conviction and single- 
ness of purpose. All Sumner's speeches in 
Congress, all his lectures on the platform, his 
appeals to the people of the Korth during 
the years when he travelled incessantly, ad- 
dressing great crowds all over the land, had 
a single theme, " Liberty is national, Slavery 
is sectional ; Liberty must be established. 
Slavery must be destroyed." He had his 
faults and limitations, but men without 
114 



The Appeal to Educated Men 

faults are generally men without force. 
Limitations are like banks to a river ; they 
increase the strength of the current for a 
mill wheel. Sumner's concentration made 
his enemies call him a narrow man and a 
fanatic. But Paul was narrow when he 
said, "This one thing I do." Luther was 
narrow when he nailed his theses to the 
door of the church in Wittenberg. Garrison 
was narrow and a fanatic when he said, " I 
will not equivocate, I will not retreat a single 
inch, and I will be heard." Kushing be- 
tween the cliffs of its banks, the Ehine has 
power thi'ough confinement ; spreading out 
over the plains of North Germany, the Ehine 
becomes a mere marsh, laden with miasm, 
blown to and fro with the winds. 

The tallow candle is small, while the sum- 
mer lightning flashes across the midnight 
sky. But for the purpose of studying a 
guide book in the dark, one lucifer match is 
worth a sky full of lightning. 

Sumner had the courage of his convictions ; 
he was brave as a lion. Having no physical 
fear, he was devoid also of moral fear. He 
had the foresight of far-off things, and could 
look beyond to-day's defeat to the coming 
victory for his cause. He had many bitter 
115 



Charles Sumner 

enemies. His intolerance and intellectual 
arrogance offended men. When a friend 
said to President Grant, "Sumner is a 
skeptic; I fear he does not believe in 
the Bible," Grant's instant retort was, 
" Certainly he does not ; he did not write 
it." 

But we can forgive much to a man who 
sacrificed much, and endured the murderous 
cross of cruelty, obloquy and shame. A 
lonely and companionless man, at the end, 
he trod the wine-press of sorrow in soli- 
tude and isolation. He had no Vv-oman's 
love to heal his wounded spirit. His one 
support was the cause he loved. To this 
cause he clung with a tenacity that was as 
sublime as it was pathetic. The last time 
he opened his eyes it was to repeat uncon- 
sciously the dearest thoughts of his life, " All 
humanity is my country." " Take care of 
my civil rights bill." 

When long time has passed, many other 
great names will pass out of view like tapers 
that have burned down to the socket. But 
the name and memory of this Puritan will 
probably survive, as the highest t3^")e of the 
scholar toiling in the heroic age of the 
Republic. 

ii6 



HOEACE GREELEY: THE APPEAL 
TO THE COMMON PEOPLE 

TO the work of the statesmen and jurists, 
the agitators and orators, must now be 
added the contribution of the editors. A loaf 
of bread represents many elements united in 
a single body. The sun lends heat, the 
clouds lend rain, the soil its chemical ele- 
ments, the air its rich dust, and the result 
is the wheaten loaf. Not otherwise is it 
with the moral and political treasure named 
the Union and the Emancipation of slaves. 
The soldier boys at the front stayed the ad- 
vancing tide of rebellion, and flung back 
from Pennsylvania waves all tipped with 
fire. With not less heroism farmer boys at 
home toiled in the fields to feed and support 
the boys in blue. Physicians in the hospitals, 
nurses at the front, lived also and died, 
caring for crippled heroes. Mothers and 
daughters, sisters, sweethearts and wives 
wrought innumerable garments and hospital 
supplies, while from full hearts giving in- 
117 



Horace Greeley 

spiration or courageously bearing the miseries 
of bereavement. Orators went forth to in- 
cite, ministers brought divine sanctions to 
inspire men towards patriotism and self- 
sacrifice. Statesmen supported the leaders 
by war measures, manufacturers and bankers 
stood behind the government. But to all 
these workers must be added the work of the 
correspondents at the front, with the edit- 
ors who consecrated the press to liberty. 

The power and wealth of the newspaper 
of to-day is explained, in no small measure, 
by the battles of the Civil War, that kindled 
the interest of millions who had never be- 
fore read the daily newspaper, but who be- 
came after the first battle students of God's 
book of daily events. During those terrible 
days men slept in dread and wakened in 
fear as to what might have happened on 
the Potomac or the Mississippi. Out of 
these tumultuous conditions the Sunday 
newspaper was born. Before the battle of 
Bull Kun people of New York and Chicago 
frowned upon the Sunday newspaper, just 
as the people of London and Edinburgh 
to-day will have none of it. But when tliere 
were a million men in arms and the whole 
land trembled with the thunder of cannon 
ii8 



The Appeal to the Common People 

and the stroke of battle, anxious parents, fear- 
ful wives, knowing that the conflict was on, 
when Saturday's sun set felt that they could 
not wait till Monday morning for news from 
the front. 

But if the war did much for the press, 
newspaper men did much for liberty. To 
supply the people of the country with news 
from the field, a veritable army of war 
correspondents was organized, a telegraphic 
service was organized and built up, plans 
were laid that developed into the Associated 
Press. This telegraphic service became a 
vast and shining web lying all over this land, 
with wires that trembled by night and day, 
flashing out now despair, and now hope, to 
innumerable hearts. Liberty owes a great 
debt to the press, for it assembled all the 
people in one vast speaking chamber, and 
told them how events were going with the 
slave and the Union. 

If we are to appreciate fully the place of 
the press during the anti-slavery epoch, we 
must recall the conditions of American life 
in the olden time. When the colonies re- 
volted and published their Declaration there 
were in the United States only forty-three 
newspapers, most of them weeklies. There 
119 



Horace Greeley 

were fourteen papers in New England, four 
in IS'ew York State, two in Virginia, two in 
Carolina and nine in Pennsylvania. The 
entire forty-three papers, however, held less 
printed matter than any ten pages of our morn- 
ing journals. The papers of that time con- 
tained no editorials, and were strictly pur- 
veyors of the gossip and news of the week, 
with rude advertisements — now a cut of a 
horse that had strayed, an apprentice that 
had escaped, a slave that had run away, en- 
livened, indeed, by frantic and pathetic ap- 
peals for the subscribers to pay up their 
dues. There were no public libraries, no 
reading rooms, no inns where men could go 
on winter evenings and read the papers. 
That which starved the newspaper was 
the lack of facilities for distribution. It cost 
twenty-five cents to send a letter. Most of 
the correspondents were widely separated 
lovers. Romeo, knowing that Juliet would 
not be able to pay twenty-five cents for his 
weekly effusion, learned the use of the cypher, 
and by means of a large circle on the out- 
side of the letter and a pink spot within 
it succeeded in conveying certain mystic 
symbols of osculation, that told the story of 
undying fidelity without paying the post- 
120 



The Appeal to the Common People 

man for the letter that was left in his hands. 
The old postman who jogged along between 
Philadelphia and New York spent three 
days on the trip, and put in his time knitting 
stockings. John Adams tells us that it took 
him six days on the coach from Boston to 
New York, and that he rose every morning 
long before day, took his seat in the cold, 
dark coach, and listened to the creaking of 
the wheels on the snow until two hours after 
dark until late Saturday night, cold and ex- 
hausted, he entered the little mn near Castle 
Garden. For these reasons no newspaper 
had any circulation beyond its own county. 
The first railroads that helped distribute 
the newspapers began to be built about 
1836, and the first ship to carry our news- 
papers to England sailed m 1838. The first 
telegraphic message was sent from Wash- 
ington to Baltimore in 184-1. The first 
cablegram in the interest of the press was 
sent in 1858. Meanwhile the people were 
isolated, starved, being fully conscious that 
they were like peasants shut in between 
mountain walls, while they longed to be 
citizens of the universe. A single illustra- 
tion from history will explain the isolation of 
communities at that time:— the news that 

121 



Horace Greeley 

Jackson had been elected President in early 
November did not reach his own State of 
Tennessee until after New Year's Day ! 

Horace Greeley entered the scene at a 
great crisis for the people, and was raised 
up to fill a national need. God had pre- 
pared the soldiers to fight for the people, 
the orators to speak to the people, the physi- 
cians to heal the people, the educators to in- 
struct the people, He had raised up the states- 
men to make the laws, but the world waited 
for men to cause knowledge to run up and 
down the land. The common people found 
a friend in Horace Greeley. He was born 
in 1811, in Amherst, Massachusetts, near the 
very cabin in which his forefathers had 
settled. God gave him a hungry mind, 
which literally consumed facts of nature and 
life. Not John Stuart Mill himself was more 
precocious than Horace Greeley. He was 
reading without difficulty at three years of 
age, and read any ordinary book at five. 
There never was an hour when he was not 
the best scholar in the little log schoolhouse, 
where he suffered the long winter through, 
scorched if he was on the inside circle next 
to the fire, or freezing if he was on the outer 
run. 

122 



The Appeal to the Common People 

Eeading was the boy's master passion. 
Lilco the locust, he consumed every dry twig 
and green branch of knowledge. Before he 
was ten years of age he believed he had read 
every book that could be borrowed within a 
radius of six miles. He read the Bible 
through, every word, when he was five years 
old; at eleven he had read Shakespeare 
and Byron. Spelling was at once a taste 
and an acquisition. The people of his neigh- 
bourhood put the child up against other 
crack spellers in the school districts. It is 
said that in the old evening spelling-bees, his 
school-teacher, who had him in charge, had 
to wake the child up when his turn came 
around to spell. The trustees of Bedford 
Academy passed a resolution permitting 
Horace Greeley, although outside of the 
district, to enter their school, while a few 
teachers raised a purse, and made an offer to 
his father to send the boy to Phillips Exeter 
Academy. But pride prevented. Horace 
Greeley's childhood fell on evil days. 
Men were miserably poor. It was one long 
warfare with hunger and cold. The ravages 
of disease among children were really the 
result of insufficient food in those poverty- 
stricken times. Although the mortgage on 
123 



Horace Greeley 

the farm was a mere bagatelle, the father 
lost the homestead, and became a hired man 
on fifty cents a day, on which amomit he 
had to feed and clothe his family. This boy 
worked by day and studied by night. His- 
tory and politics, poetry and science, formed 
the staples of his reading and reflection. 
For two years he pleaded with his father to 
apprentice him to a printer ; the day that the 
printer refused the boy and showed the poor 
farmer and his son the door, brought black 
gloom to his heart, for when the door of the 
printing office closed before him, the gates 
of paradise seemed shut forever. 

Trained in the school of experience, and a 
graduate of the university of hard-knocks, at 
twenty years of age the boy determined to 
seek his fortune in New York. There are 
few scenes more pathetic than the spectacle 
of this friendless boy starting to walk from 
Erie, Pa., to this metropolis, then a city of 
only two hundred thousand people. He had 
a tow head, a bent form, a singular dress, 
and carried his entire belongings in a little 
bundle, supported by a walking stick thrown 
over his shoulder. Partly on foot, partly on 
the wagon of some farmer, who ga\'e the 
traveller a lift, partly on the canal boats, 
124 



The Appeal to the Cominon People 

Horace Greeley made his way until, after 
many days, in August, 1831, he landed at the 
foot of Wall Street. 

Kot Benjamin Franklin, landing on the 
wharves of Philadelphia, and buying a fresh 
roll on which he breakfasted while he went 
about looking for work, is so fascinating a fig- 
ure as this simple-hearted, unworldly, artless, 
unsophisticated youth, with the step of a clod- 
hopper and the face of an angel. Counting 
his coin, the boy found he had ten dollars 
left, and straightway took lodgings on West 
Street, for which he promised to pay two 
dollars and a half a week. He soon found 
a job and began to set type on an edition of 
the New Testament, with marginal notes 
in Greek and Latin. In two years he had 
his own printing oiRce,and in 1831 the youth 
found his place as the editor of the New 
Yorker^ a weekly that first of all took stories 
and the name of Charles Dickens to the 
people of ]S^ew York. He soon carried the 
newspaper up to nine thousand subscribers, 
and a gross income of $25,000. Genius makes 
its own way. The world is always looking 
for unique ability. Horace Greeley had the 
art of putting things. He could make a 
statement that would go to the intellect 

125 



Horace Greeley 

like an arrow to the bull's-eye. There is 
always plenty of room for the man who has 
a gift and can do a thing better than any 
one else. 

But the panic of 1837 bankrupted Greeley, 
who knew nothing about the business end of 
his enterprise. He had 9,000 subscribers, 
but none of them would pay their bills, and 
the more his paper grew the worse off he was. 
One day he struck from the roll the names of 
2,500 subscribers. A little later he offered to 
give the entire establishment to a friend, and 
pay him $2,000 for taking it off his hands, 
agreeing to work out by typesetting the large 
debt. Then came an overture from Thur- 
low Weed and Benedict, and Greeley founded 
the Log Cabin^ a campaign paper advocating 
the election of General Harrison as president, 
and sent out the slogan "Tippecanoe and 
Tyler, too.'' Politics was his passion and 
delight. An ardent Whig, he loved Henry 
Clay as an enthusiast, and worshipped him 
like a disciple. The death of Harrison in 
1841, therefore, brought another crisis into 
Greeley's life. Then he founded the New 
York Trib une. In later years Horace Greeley 
used to say that the first half of his life was 
preparatory to founding the Tribune, and the 
126 



The Appeal to the Common People 

other half to building up the newspaper that 
was his pride. 

On April 3, 184:1, the Log Cahin contained 
an announcement of the appearance of " a 
morning journal of politics, literature and 
general intelligence." It was to be sold for 
one penny, was to be free from all immoral 
reports, to be accurate in its statements, im- 
partial in its judgments, unbiassed and un- 
fettered in its opinions. The JS'ew Yorker 
and the Log Cabin were merged in the new 
journal. The expenses for the first week of 
the Tribune's existence were $525, and its 
Income $92. Greeley was thirty years old, 
full of health and vigour, pluck and de- 
termination. He never knew when he was 
defeated, and when events knocked him 
down, he quietly got up again, In seven 
weeks the Tribune had a circulation of 
11,000. Fertile in resources, full of plans 
to advertise his journal, he gained 20,000 
during a single political campaign. Later 
he sent carrier pigeons to Halifax to bring 
home special news. When Daniel Webster 
was to make an important speech in 
Albany, he sent a case of type up by the 
night boat, and when the Albany boat 
reached Kew York the report of the speech 

12/ 



Horace Greeley 

was all ready to be locked up for the press. 
When the heart sings, the hand works easily. 
Work for the Tribune was literally food and 
medicine for Greeley. His daily stint was 
three or four columns, besides his corre- 
spondence, lectures and addresses. For 
twenty years he had no vacation and no 
rest. His one ideal was to make the 
Tribune an accurate and trustworthy guide 
for the political thinking of the common 
people. 

What literature was to Burke, what pa- 
triotism was to Webster, what all mankind 
was to Paul, that politics and political writ- 
ing were to Horace Greeley. Dr. Bacon 
once said of a secretary of the State Associa- 
tion of Connecticut that he was " possessed 
of a statistical devil." And Horace Greeley's 
Tribune Almanac became so great a power 
that an envious competitor once said that 
Horace Greeley was possessed of a political 
devil, who helped him in his statistics on 
Protection. At last the Trihune became a 
national organ, an acknowledged power. 
Horace Greeley began to make history, and 
in 1860 prevented Seward's nomination for 
the presidency. It was Greeley's personal 
preference for Governor Bates of Missouri 
128 



The Appeal to the Common People 

that made possible the nomination of Abra- 
ham Lincobi. 

As a reformer, Greeley was an extremist 
in politics. Whatever he wanted, he wanted 
on the moment, and had no patience in 
waiting. He was as uncompromising as 
Garrison, as insistent as Wendell Phillips, 
and as bitter in his criticism of Lincoln 
for postponing emancipation as Theodore 
Parker himself could have been. When the 
South seceded Greeley said that we must 
"let the erring sisters go." He thought 
that the North could do without the South 
quite as well as the South could do without 
the North ; that is no true marriage that 
binds husband and wife together with chains 
when love has fled away. He urged that if 
any six States would send their representa- 
tives to Washington and say : " We wish 
to withdraw from the Union," the North 
had better let those States depart. It 
was not that Greeley felt it was best to 
dissolve the Union, but that he loathed the 
idea of compelling States by force to remain 
in it. 

For a long time he carried the head-lines 
" On to Richmond " and roused the North into 
such a frenzy of feeling that he goaded the 
129 



Horace Greeley 

President, the Cabinet and General Winfield 
Scott into action before they were ready. 
Scott was at the head of the army. He was 
a Virginian, and loved the Old Dominion 
State with every drop of blood in his veins. 
The great men of the South on thek knees 
begged Scott to join the South and lead the 
host of rebellion. Scott answered that he 
had sworn a solemn oath to defend the Con- 
stitution and the country, and made himself 
an outcast that he might be true to God and 
the Union. But the cry " On to Eichmond " 
became the cry of an unreasoning multitude 
of editors and their readers. All unpre- 
pared, the advance was ordered and Bull 
Kun was the result. Greeley, being the lead- 
ing editor of the land, was made the scape- 
goat — the target of universal criticism. The 
barbed arrows found his brain, and be- 
coming excited, sleepless and overwrought, 
Greeley went into an attack of brain 
fever, from which he recovered only after 
long time, to register a vow that he would 
never again discuss the management of the 
army. Then came his editorials urging 
emancipation, illustrated by " The prayer of 
twenty millions," and Lincoln's wonderful 
reply, written to Greeley, " in deference to 
130 



The Appeal to the Common People 

an old friend whose heart I have abvays 
found to be right." It is honour enough for 
any editor to have called out Lincoln's letter 
(August 22, 1862), a letter that placed the 
President in the first rank as a master of 
epigrammatic speech, and put in a nutshell 
the whole position of the government in re- 
lation to the war. 

Greeley was wrong again in 1864, when he 
met certain representatives of the South at 
Niagara Falls and suggested a plan of adjust- 
ment for the ending of the war. These so- 
called peace commissioners, without doubt, 
used Greeley as a convenient tool, and ex- 
hibited him as Don Quixote, riding forth 
upon a windmill enterprise. But Greeley 
had the courage of his opinions ; threats 
could not cow him nor blows terrify him, 
nor scorn and hate drive him from a position 
which he had taken upon grounds of con- 
science and sound reasoning. 

During the draft riots, in 1863, the mob 
attacked the Trihme^ smashing the windows 
and doors, and it seemed a miracle that 
Greeley was not killed. When his friends 
rescued him the great editor seemed quite 
unwilling to be forced into a place of safety. 
" Well, it doesn't matter ; I have done my 
131 



Horace Greeley 

work ; I may as well be killed by the mob 
as die in my bed ; between now and the next 
time is only a little while." 

In May, 1867, Greeley signed the bail bond 
for Jefferson Davis, ex-president of the Con- 
federacy. Burning with anger his friends 
in the Union League Club of Xew York 
called a meeting to expel him. He returned 
a defiant answer : " Gentlemen, I shall not 
attend your meeting; I have an engage- 
ment out of town and I shall keep it. I do 
not recognize you as capable of judging 
me. You evidently regard me as a weak 
sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin philoso- 
phy. I arraign you as narrow-minded block- 
heads, who would like to be useful to a great 
and good cause but don't know how. Your 
attempt to base a great and enduring party 
on the hate and wrath engendered by a 
bloody civil war is as though you should 
plant a colony on an iceberg which had 
somehow drifted into a tropical ocean. I 
tell you here that out of a life earnestly de- 
voted to the good of human kind, your chil- 
dren will select my going to Kichmond and 
signing that bail bond as the wisest act of 
my life, and will feel that it did more for 
freedom and humanity than all of you were 
132 



The Appeal to the Common People 

competent to do though you Kved to the age 
of Methuselah. Understand, once for all, 
that I dare you and defy you. So long as 
any man was seeking to overthrow our gov- 
ernment he was my enemy ; from the hour 
when he laid down his arms he was my 
formerly erring countryman." 

In 1872, Greeley became the Kepublican 
who was a candidate of the Democratic 
party for the presidency, and was defeated 
by Grant. Doubtless he was actuated by 
the highest sense of duty. He took the 
stump and spoke in every great city in the 
North and South, without swerving a hair's 
breadth in his pacific attitude towards the 
South, or in his championship of the col- 
oured race. His great work, "The American 
Conflict," on which he spent ten hours a 
day for many, many months, had made 
Greeley a master of all the facts bearing 
upon the reconciliation of the North and 
South. He showed almost superhuman en- 
durance during that intense campaign. But 
Grant had captured the imagination of the 
people. The old soldiers voted as one solid 
band, the Eepublican party was looked upon 
as the saviour of the nation, and the people 
doubted Mr. Greeley's fitness for the presi- 
133 



Horace Greeley 

dency in a national crisis. He was defeated 
in November, and went home to watch over 
his wife during her illness and death. Just 
before she died, he wrote a friend saying : 
*' I am a broken old man ; I have not slept 
one hour in twenty -four ; if she lasts, poor 
soul, another week, I shall go before her." 
Sleeplessness brought on brain fever, his old 
enemy, and on Xovember 29th, the worn- 
out editor fell on sleep. 

His fellow countrymen wakened to realize 
that the great tribune of the people had left 
the country poor. His own city rose as one 
man, in mood of profound grief and affec- 
tionate admiration and sympathy. His body 
lay in state in our city hall the long day 
through. The poor poured by in unending 
column, to pay their last tribute to a man 
who had never betrayed the people. The 
funeral services were attended by the presi- 
dent and vice-president of the United States, 
the president-elect, and numerous officials 
and citizens of distinction. Mr. Beecher 
-made one address and then Greeley's pastor, 
Dr. Chapin, spoke. Men forgot the wi-eck 
of his political fortunes and the tragedy of 
his later career. He expressed the ambition 
of his life in the wish " that the stone which 
134 



The Appeal to' the Common People 

covers my ashes may bear to future eyes 
the still intelligible inscription : ' Founder of 
the :N'ew York Tribune.'" 

A Universalist in his religious faith, 
Horace Greeley believed that right was 
stronger than wrong, good more powerful 
than evil, and that there will be in eternal 
ages no endless perdition for the evil ones of 
earth, but that God and all the resources of 
His power and love will here or there com- 
pel every knee to bow and every will surren- 
der to the will divine. He earned the right 
to say at the end of his noble career, " I have 
been spared to see the end of giant w^rongs 
that I once deemed invincible in this coun- 
try, and to note the silent upspringing and 
growth of principles and influences which I 
hail as destined to root out some of the most 
flagi'ant and pervading influences that re- 
main. So, looking calmly, yet humbly, for 
that close of my mortal career which cannot 
be far distant, I reverently thank God for the 
blessings vouchsafed me in the past; and 
with an awe that is not fear, and a conscious- 
ness of demerit which does not exclude hope, 
await the opening before my steps of the 
gates of the Eternal World." 



135 



YI 

HAKEIET BEECHEE STOWE; JOHN 

BKOWN : THE CONFLICT 

PKECIPITATED 

ABOUT 1850, as the result of the long 
agitation of the editors and orators, 
preachers and poets, the people of this coun- 
try entered upon a heated mood, when ex- 
citement dwelt like fire in the intellect and 
conscience. For thinking men, it was becom- 
ing clear that civil war was inevitable, and 
that commercial relations between North and 
South would soon be broken off. But the 
North had goods to sell, and the South had 
money with which to buy ; so the word was 
passed that every one must keep silence 
about slavery, lest discussion bring on a 
financial panic. It was the era of impris- 
oned moral sense. In the ocean, some waves 
are tidal waves, and on land sometimes the soil 
is heaved by an earthquake ; at this time God 
began to heave the conscience of the people 
as the full moon heaves the sea. And al- 
though we now see that God was behind the 
136 



The Conflict Precipitated 

movement, foolish men then tried to stay 
these moral forces. J^orthern merchants 
and politicians cried, " Peace ! " and the 
Southern successors of Calhoun lifted the 
old club, the threat of secession; but the 
agitation went on all over the North. 
Toombs, the Southern senator, tried sheer 
bombast, and said he would call the roll 
of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill 
monument. Timid men in the North be- 
gan to cry : " Conciliate, conciliate ! " But 
there can be warfare, and only warfare be- 
tween darkness and light, between sickness 
and health, between wrong and right. At 
length Phillips and Greeley took up the cry : 
" Let the South go ! " But the answer was : 
" Shall a strong man who has hold of a mad 
dog let the beast go into a crowd of little 
children ? " Compromise did something for 
a time, as a safety valve, relieving men's 
pent-up feelings. But God had His own 
counsels. Plainly, " every di'op of blood 
shed by the lash was to be paid for by 
blood shed by the sword," for "the judg- 
ments of God are true and righteous alto- 
gether." 

During those heated days of 1850, when 
the men of light and leading began to see 
137 



Harriet Beecher Stowe ; John Brown 

their way clearly, the masses were still timid, 
hesitant and vacillating in their judgments 
on slavery. Scholars and thinking men had 
already been reached by poets, authors and 
editors, while the preachers and lecturers 
had driven their message home to the con- 
viction of the ruling classes. Later on was 
to come the revival of 1857 that should stir 
the conscience, but preparatory to that move- 
ment it w^ necessary to inform the intellect 
and rouse the affections of the millions. 
Then it was that God raised up an author to 
touch the heart of the people. 

Wonderful the power of the novel in social 
reform ! The novels of " Oliver Twist," and 
" Dombey and Son," were what roused the 
English people to a realization of the woes 
and wrongs of chimney sweeps, of children 
in the factories and mines of Great Britain. 
It was a novel, " All Sorts and Conditions of 
Men," that later built People's Palace in 
the Whitechapel district of London. And it 
was a novel, named " L^ncle Tom's Cabin," 
that created the atmosphere of sympathy in 
which the flowers of self-sacrifice and heroism 
unfolded. 

The authoress was the daughter of Ljrman 
Beecher, who had seven sons and four daugh- 
138 



The Conflict Precipitated 

ters, each one of whom was either a preacher 
or reformer in some field. His daughter, 
Harriet, married Prof. Calvin E. Stowe, 
of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, where, on 
the border between the free soil of Ohio and 
the slave soil of Kentucky, people were in a 
state of constant excitement and upheaval. 
The old Blue Grass State exhibited slavery 
in its very best condition and also in its worst 
form. The harrowing tales and incidents 
that were afterwards worked up into literary 
form by the gifted authoress were all mat- 
ters of observation, conversation and expe- 
rience. One of the earliest incidents of the 
Stowes' life in Cincinnati was an experience 
of Professor Stowe with one of the Beecheiv 
boys. While travelling in Kentucky, the two 
young men witnessed the flight of a negro 
woman, who was running away with her 
little child, whom they helped across the 
Ohio Pviver, to be sent on by the Under- 
ground Eailway to Oberlin, on the shore of 
Lake Erie. And the similar incident, Eliza's 
flight across the ice, her son Charles ' writes 
in his recent story of her life, " was an actual 

1" Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Story of Her Life." 
By Charles E. Stowe and Lyman Beecher Stowe. Bos- 
ton : Houghton Mifflin Co. 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

occurrence. She had known and had often 
talked with the very man who helped Eliza 
up the bank of the river." 

Later during their Cincinnati residence, 
Mrs. Stowe conducted a small private school 
and made a practice of allowing a few col- 
oured children to attend it. One evening 
the mother of one of these coloured children 
came to the Stowes' house in a frenzy of ter- 
ror, saying that her little girl had been seized 
and carried to the river, to be sold as a slave 
in Kentucky. Mrs. Stowe raised the money 
to ransom the beautiful child. 

It was during this period that the Ken- 
tucky editor, Bailey, moved across the river 
and began to publish a paper in Cincinnati. 
One night the editor knocked at the door of 
the Stowe home, seeking refuge from a mob 
that had smashed in his doors and windows, 
looted his printing-office, and flung his type 
into the river. 

On another occasion a Kentuckian named 
Yan Zandt freed his slaves and carried them 
across the river into Ohio. His old friends 
counted him a traitor, and charges were 
trumped up that he had used his new home 
in Ohio as an underground station for 
the receiving of runaway slaves. Professor 
140 



The Conflict Precipitated 

Stowe was asked to assist in Van Zandt's de- 
fense. When other lawyers were afraid of 
the mob spirit, a young attorney named Sal- 
mon P. Chase volunteered his services with- 
out pay. As the courts were then entirely 
under the influence of the Fugitive Slave law, 
young Chase lost his case ; but that no dra- 
matic note might be wanting, this young at- 
torney later became chief justice of the 
United States Supreme Court and wrote 
a decision that reversed the former action. 
All these and many other facts and events 
w^ent into Mrs. Stowe's mind as raw silk, 
and came out tapestry and brocade. The 
fuel of events fed the flames of enthusiasm. 
It was a great age, when men had to speak. 
The time was ripe, the soil was ready, God 
gave the good seed of liberty, and the sower 
went forth to sow. 

^Irs. Stowe tells us how she came to write 
the last chapter of the book, the death of 
*' Uncle Tom." She had a coloured woman 
in her family w^hose husband was a slave, 
living in Kentucky. This black man had 
invented a simple tool, was a good salesman, 
and was permitted to travel from town to 
town, and even to cross the river into the 
Ohio, under no bond save his solemn pledge 
141 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

to his master not to run away. Mrs. Stovre 
wrote the letters for her servant, to this 
black man in Covington, Ky. One day, 
while \4siting his wife, in the Stowe home, 
he said that he would rather cut off his right 
hand than break the word he had given to 
his master. What white man could boast a 
more delicate sense of truth ? How keen 
and delicate the conscience ! What weight 
of manhood in a slave ! What resen^es 
of morality ! What latent heroism ! The 
slave's story captured the imagination of the 
authoress, and kindled her mind into a cre- 
ative mood. 

Out of the incident Mrs. Stowe evolved 
the character of "Uncle Tom." One Sun- 
day morning, as she sat at the communion 
table, the picture of Tom's death rose and 
passed before her mind. "At the same 
time," urates her son, " the words of Jesus 
were sounding in her ears : ' Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto one of the least of these 
My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.' It 
seemed as if the crucified but now risen and 
glorified Christ were speaking to her through 
the poor black man, cut and bleeding under 
the blows of the slave whi2:>." Long after- 
wards some one asked Mrs. Stowe how she 
142 



The Conflict Precipitated 

came to write the death of Uncle Tom, and 
she answered that she did not write it, that 
God gave it to her in a vision, that she saw 
the overseer flog him to death, and heard his 
dying words, and merely wrote down the 
vision as she saw it. At the time, she had 
no idea of writing more : it was a year later 
when she began the tale of which this inci- 
dent became the crisis. 

For nearly two years the story ran in the 
National Em, published in Washington. 
The book was completed on March 20, 1852, 
and in spite of Mrs. Stowe's despondency 
and apprehension of failure, it sold 3,000 
copies the first day, 10,000 in a week, and 
300,000 in a year. Save "Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress" alone, perhaps no book ever had a 
wider circulation, the Bible, of course, and 
" The Imitation of Christ," by a Kempis, al- 
ways excepted. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was 
translated into German, French, Italian and 
Spanish, and later appeared in almost every 
known language. Written for the people at 
large, the book struck a chord of universal 
human nature, and aroused the learned as well 
as the simple. Soon letters began to pour 
in from the most distinguished men in foreign 
countries. Charles Dickens wrote that he 
143 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

had read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with the 
deepest interest and sympathy. Lord Car- 
lisle sent a message of '^deep and solemn 
thanks to Almighty God, who has enabled 
you to write this book." Charles Kingsley 
expressed the judgment that the story would 
take away the reproach of slavery from the 
great and growing nation. Men like Shaftes- 
bury, Arthur Helps, women like George 
Sand and Frederika Bremer added their 
tribute of praise. Eighteen different pub- 
lishing houses in England w^ere issuing the 
book at one time, and a million and a half 
copies were sold in Great Britain. 

Even Heinrich Heine, the poet, the cynic, 
who carried more power of sarcasm and 
irony than any man of his generation, was 
so moved by the book that he seems to have 
returned to the reading of the Bible, and to 
Christ the Consoler, in the hour when night 
and death were falling. " Astonishing ! 
That after I have whirled about all my life, 
over all the dance floors of philosophy, and 
yielded myself to all the orgies of the intel- 
lect, and paid my addresses to all possible 
systems, without satisfaction, like Messalina 
after a licentious night, I now find myself 
on the same standpoint where poor Uncle 
144 



The Conflict Precipitated 

Tom stands — on that of the Bible. I kneel 
down by my black brother in the same 
prayer. What a humiliation ! With all my 
sense I have come no farther than the poor 
ignorant negro who has just learned to spell. 
Poor Tom indeed seems to have seen deeper 
things in the holy book than I, but I, who 
used to make citations from Homer, now be- 
gin to quote the Bible as Uncle Tom does ! " 
Praise can go no farther than this, that 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" has shown how the 
love of God can support a slave, under the 
lash, in the hour when he is flogged to death, 
and fill his heart with pity while he cries, 
"Father, forgive them, for they know not 
what they do ! " It was this that conquered 
the intellect of the scholar, and broke his 
heart, and flooded his eyes with tears. 

Perhaps the most striking testimony to 
the influence of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " 
grew out of a suggestion of Lord Shaftes- 
bury's that the women of England and 
Europe send their signatures to a testi- 
monial to be presented to Mrs. Stowe, for, 
when this testimonial came in, it filled 
twenty-six thick folio volumes, solidly 
bound in morocco, and it held the names 
of 562,448 women, representing every rank, 
145 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

from the throne of England to the wives 
of the humblest artisans in Wales or the 
peasants in Italy. 

The message of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " is 
so simple that he who runs may read. It 
was not written for literary critics, for 
scholars or for college graduates. George 
Eliot wrote her "Komola" with the his- 
torian and the philosopher and the editor 
of reviews ever in mind. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for 
farmers, factory men, merchants and clerks, 
the miscellaneous mass that make up the 
millions, to rouse them to the wrongs of 
slavery. 

In it she tried to prove two things. 
First, that slavery, as a system, reacted 
upon the loftiest natures, distorting and in- 
juring them. Witness the Kentucky gentle- 
man, Mr. Shelby. His T\dfe was a patri- 
cian, the very embodiment of courtesy and 
good- will, affection and sympathy. Her hus- 
band was a man of honour, a representative 
of the bluest blood of the old Lexington 
families, with a heart so gentle that the 
sight of a young bird that had fallen out 
of the nest in the tree moved him to tears ; 
but, little by little, pressed by his necessities 

146 



The Conflict Precipitated 

and hardened by the spectacle of slaves 
bought and slaves sold, he himself sells the 
woman who has been a nurse to his chil- 
dren, and Uncle Tom who has been like a 
saviour to his own boys in the hour of their 
peril in forest and river, sends both of the 
slaves into the cotton plantations of Louisiana, 
breaking his solemn pledge to his wife and 
his family, in the hope that he could escape 
from debt, that like a millstone weighed him 
into the abyss. 

Then, the book tries to show how slavery 
develops the worst men, of the stamp of 
Simon Legree, the brutal overseer. Legree 
pours out the vials of his wrath upon the 
slaves about him, debauching a young octa- 
roon to the level of his mistress, hunting his 
slaves with bloodhounds, killing them with- 
out trial before a jury. Power is dangerous ; 
there is the czar spirit in every man. Slavery 
made a brute still more brutal — made the 
sensual man more sensual, and finally debased 
Legree to the level of the demon. 

It is a book full of pathos and tears. Ke- 
membering that the book was written for 
the miscellaneous millions, to rouse the 
nation at large to moral indignation, it is 
doubtful whether any book was ever more 
147 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

perfectly adapted to the end aimed at. Lit- 
erary artists have criticized " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," and contrasted it with "Henry 
Esmond," "Vanity Fair " and " Adam Bede." 
But if Thackeray, Dickens and George Eliot 
achieved unique success in creating books 
that should reach their set, one thing is cer- 
tain, — the boys, who afterwards became the 
soldiers of the Civil "War, read "Uncle 
Tom's Cabin " with dim eyes and indignant 
hearts, because the book found their judg- 
ment and theu' conscience, and lifted them 
to the point where they were made ready in 
the day of God's power, to fight the battle 
for freedom. 

When all the school children had read the 
death of little Eva and of Uncle Tom, and 
all the farm.ers and working men — the 
dwellers in city and country, from sea-board 
to mountains and prairie — had followed the 
career of these slaves to the end, and the 
people of the North were fully awake to the 
horror of the slave traffic, the multitudes 
began to look with questioning eyes into 
each other's faces, asking, " T\^hat can be 
done ? What is the next step ? " And then 
it was that a fanatic entered the scene. 

His name was John Brown, descended 
148 



The Conflict Precipitated 

from Peter Brown, a Pilgrim of the May- 
floioer. He had been cattle-drover, tanner 
and wool-merchant. When about forty 
years of age he was living in Springfield, 
Massachusetts. One night, in 1849, a run- 
away slave knocked at his door and told 
Brown the story of his flight, of the weeks 
he had spent hiding in the swamps, of his 
escape to the fastnesses of the mountains, of 
his life in the forest, and how he finally 
reached Xew York and Springfield. It was 
a story of starvation, hunger, cold, blows and 
piercing anguish. Long after the children 
had gone to bed at midnight, while the slave 
was sleeping in a blanket beside the fire, John 
Brown sat musing over the national infamy. 
All the next day and night the conference 
continued with this runaway, who was also a 
negro preacher. The following night John 
Brown assembled his sons. He closed the 
door and told his family his decision. He 
was a tall man, over six feet, straight and 
lithe, slightly gray, with thin lips and smooth 
face. The Bible was almost the only book 
in the house, and no sound was so familiar 
as the voice of prayer. Brown was lifted 
into the prophetic mood. He told his family 
that he had decided to give hunself, and to 
149 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

consecrate them, to righting the wrongs of 
the slaves ; that he had heard a voice calling 
him to the work of the deliverer ; that he 
would be killed) and that they must expect 
also to die the martyr's death, and that 
henceforth they must expect only crusts, 
wounds, bitter enmity, and finally martyr- 
dom. A little later and Brown had 
moved the younger children of his family 
to North Elba, in the Adirondack woods, 
that the slaves on the underground route 
might be able to hide in the forest, in 
the event of the pursuers overtaking them. 
Brown then began to travel along Mason 
and Dixon's line from the city of Washing- 
ton through to Topeka, Kan. From time to 
time he would cross the line, take charge of 
a little group of slaves, and hiding by day 
and travelling by night, carry them from 
one underground station to another. It was 
said that he had personally conducted run- 
away slaves along every route for a thou- 
sand miles from East to West, between the 
Atlantic and the Missouri River. 

One of the friends of Brown's childhood 
was the Hon. James B. Grinnell, who founded 
the town and college in Iowa. This con- 
gressman loved to tell the story of the night 
150 



The Conflict Precipitated 

when John Brown knocked at his door. 
Outside was a wagon, packed with slaves, 
whom Brown had carried across the line from 
Missouri. He had driven four horses at 
their limit of speed for a hundred miles and 
had no defenders, save two or three men and 
as many guns. " I am a dealer in wool," 
said the stranger, '' and my name is Captain 
John Brown of Kansas." The first thing 
Mr. Grinnell did was to find a shelter for 
these slaves, with food and beds. The next 
thing was to hide the wagon and the horses 
in the thick grove near by. Early the next 
morning the news spread like wild-fire, and 
the settlers began to pour in. John Brown 
made a speech to the farmers and justified 
his act. The villagers were terrified lest the 
pursuers come any moment and hum their 
houses. The three Congregational ministers 
offered prayers, asked for help, and started 
out to raise money. When the night fell the 
slaves were rushed to the terminus of the 
railway and carried through to Chicago, 
being shipped in a freight car as sheep, to 
distinguish their woolly heads from the goats, 
named white men. 

In 1855 John Brown led his five sons and 
their families into Kansas, to help preempt 
151 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

the State for freedom. When at length the 
free state voters won an election and en- 
throned their governor, two thousand pro- 
slavery men from Missouri crossed the State 
line, burned the little town of Lawrence, and 
at the point of the pistol compelled the State 
officials to resign ; issued writs for a new elec- 
tion, put in a slavery governor, captured the 
government, and started back into Missouri. 
On their way they passed through Pottawat- 
amie. It was a guerrilla warfare. "When 
John Brown reached his son's cabin, he found 
the settlers preparing for flight. He de- 
nounced them as cowards, and when one 
urged caution, answered, " I am tired of that 
word Caution. It is nothing but cowardice ! " 
Either the border ruffians had to go, or else 
the settlers must leave without striking a 
single blow in defense of their homes. A* 
man's cabin was his castle. Without wait- 
ing for the next attack to be made, John 
Brown pointed the settlers to the smoking 
ashes of cabins already burned and to the 
bodies that the Missouri guerrillas had left on 
the ground, and took the aggressive himself. 
He seized five of the outlaws and killed them 
for their crime. 

The deed flred Kansas, some say freed 
152 



The Conflict Precipitated 

Kansas, while others think it opened the 
Civil War. Withdrawing to the forest, hid- 
ing in the cottonwood swamps, John Brown 
organized his company. A reporter of the 
New York Tribune Unally penetrated the 
thicket. "Near the edge of the creek a 
dozen horses were tied, already saddled for 
a ride for life. A dozen rifles were stacked 
against the trees. In an open space was a 
blazing fire with a pot above it. Three or 
four armed men were lying on red and blue 
blankets on the grass. John Brown himself 
stood near the fire with his shirt sleeves rolled 
up and a piece of pork in his hand. He was 
poorly clad, and his toes protruded from his 
boots. The old man received me with great 
cordiality, and the little band gathered about 
me. He respectfully, but firmly, forbade 
conversation on the Pottawatamie affair. 
After the meal, thanks were returned to the 
bountiful Giver. Often, I was told, the old 
man would retire to the densest solitudes to 
wrestle with his God in prayer. He said he 
was fighting God's battles for his children's 
sake : ' Give me men of good principles. God- 
fearing men, men who respect themselves, 
and with a dozen of them I will oppose a 
hundred such men as these border ruffians.' 
153 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

I remained in the camp about an hour. 
Never before had I met such a band of men. 
They were not earnest, but earnestness in- 
carnate." 

After several years of bloody conflict and 
political struggles between the pro-slavery 
and anti slavery parties, in 1859 the Consti- 
tution prohibiting slavery was passed, and 
freedom had won in Kansas. In January of 
that year John Brown returned to the moun- 
tains of Yirginia, and "The Great Black 
Way," and the dark shadows of the night 
following the North Star to liberty. For 
many years he had been planning an uprising 
of the slaves, and an attack upon Virginia. 
Some biographers think he conceived the 
plan as early as 1849. Away back in 1831: 
Brown wrote to his brother his determina- 
tion to war on slavery ; but at first only 
through educating the blacks. As time went 
on he came into sterner conflict with it. 

Brown, in fact, became a fanatic who 
really believed that the millions of slaves 
Avould rise at his call, and that he could lead 
his host as a new Moses, out of the land of 
bondage. He intended to operate in the Blue 
Eidge Mountains, because the paths into the 
black belt of slavery were easily followed. 
154 



The Conflict Precipitated 

Men like Douglas and other escaped slaves 
who were living in the North did not see 
theu^ way clear to join the movement. 

On Sunday, October 16, 1859, John Brown, 
with sixteen men, started out to capture 
Harper's Ferry and redeem three million 
slaves. Brown rode in a one-horse wagon, 
that held provisions, pikes, one sledge-ham- 
mer and one crowbar ; his sixteen men, with 
guns, followed on foot. Without a single 
shot they captured the armoury and the rifle 
factory, and at daylight, without the snap 
of a gun or any violence whatsoever, they 
were in possession of Harper's Ferry. On 
Monday morning the panic spread like wild- 
fire. The rumour went abroad of an upris- 
ing of all the slaves of the South. In a few 
hours the governor called out the militia, 
Jefferson guards marched down the Potomac, 
and two local companies took positions on 
the heights. The assault began in the after- 
noon. One by one Brown's handful were 
killed, his two sons, Oliver and Watson, were 
shot down, and Brown, badly wounded, was 
captured. 

The trial and examination of the old fa- 
natic makes a fascinating story. At noon of 
Tuesday, the governor of Virginia bent over 
155 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

him as he lay wounded and blood-stained 
upon the floor. " Who are you ? " asked the 
governor. " My name is John Brown ; I have 
been well known as old John Brown of Kan- 
sas. Two of my sons were killed here to-day, 
and I am dying too. I came here to hberate 
slaves, and was to receive no reward. I have 
acted from a sense of duty, and am content 
to await my fate. I am an old man. If I 
had succeeded in running off slaves this time, 
I could have raised twenty times as many 
men as I have now for a similar expedition ; 
but I have failed." 

Then Governor Wise said, *' The silver of 
your hair is reddened by the blood of crime. 
You should think upon eternity." 

John Brown replied, " Governor, I have not 
more than fifteen or twenty years the start of 
you to that eternity, and I am prepared to go. 
There is an eternity behind and an eternity 
before, and this little speck in the centre is 
but a minute. The difference between your 
time and mine is trifling, and I therefore tell 
you — be prepared. I am prepared — you have 
a heavy responsibility. It behooves you to 
prepare, and more than it does me." 

Friends in the North tried to secure Brown's 
release, but he answered them : " I think I 
156 



The Conflict Precipitated 

cannot now better serve the cause I love so 
much than to die for it, and in my death I 
may do more than in my life. I believe that 
for me, at this time, to seal my testimony for 
God and humanity through my blood will do 
vastly more towards advancing the cause I 
have earnestly endeavoured to promote than 
all I have done in my life before." 

When the court asked Brown if he had 
any reason why he should not be hung, he 
answered : " This court acknowledges the 
validity of the law of God. I see a book 
kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible. 
That book teaches me to remember them 
that are in bonds as bound with them. I 
endeavoured to act up to that instruction. I 
believe that to interfere as I have done, in 
behalf of God's poor, was not wrong, but 
right. I am quite certain that the crimes of 
this guilty land will never be purged away 
but with blood. It it is deemed necessary 
that I should forfeit my life for the further- 
ance of the ends of justice, and mingle my 
blood further with the blood of my children, 
and with the blood of millions in this slave 
country, whose rights are disregarded by 
wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I sub- 
mit. So let it be done." 
157 



Harriet Beecher Stowe; John Brown 

On ihe morning of his hanging he visited 
his doomed companions, and then kissed his 
Aviie good-bye. A thousand soldiers stood 
round about his scaffold. '^ This is a beauti- 
ful land," said Brown, as he rode, looking 
across the landscape. As he chmbed the 
steps of the scaffold a negro child stood be- 
tween some black men, and some say he 
stooped and kissed the child. And this was 
his prayer : 

" My love to all who love their neighbours. 
I have asked to be spared from having any 
weak or hypocritical prayers said over me 
when I am publicl}^ murdered, and that my 
only religious attendants be poor, little, dh'ty, 
ragged, bareheaded, and barefooted slave 
boys and girls, led by some gray-headed 
slave mother. . . . Farewell, farewell." 
lie died in the spirit of the letter written the 
day before, when he said, " I think I feel as 
happy as Paul did when he lay in prison, for 
men cannot chain or hang the soul." 

His deed puzzled the world. For multi- 
tudes it is still an enigma. To many, John 
Brown seems not only a fanatic but a luna- 
tic. To others, now that long time has 
passed, this white-haired old man, weltering 
in his blood, which he had spilled for a 
158 



The Conflict Precipitated 

broken and despised race, seems right, and 
he seems to have died, not as a fool dies, but 
as martyrs die. That his enterprise was 
doomed to failure in advance, all knew. 
That it was not the wisest plan. Brown's 
best friends must grant. But that its fa- 
naticism was overruled by God to release the 
great South from the incubus of slavery. 
Brown's friends and Brown's enemies alike 
must concede. 

What other men had been ^vriting about, 
John Brown did in action. The attack on 
Harper's Ferry was the first blow struck 
during the Civil War. Other men and 
women assembled the explosives, but John 
Brown dropped the spark in the magazine, 
which finally blew up that hindrance to prog- 
ress, slavery — the Hell Gate obstruction in 
the passageway of the South and of all 
civilization. 



159 



YII 

LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS: INFLU- 
ENCE OF THE GEEAT DEBATE 

STEICTLY speaking, there were thi-ee 
stages in the development of the anti- 
slavery sentiment leading up to the Civil 
War. There was the period of indifference, 
from 1759 to 1830, when the North winked 
at slavery, ignored the traffic and avoided 
the whole subject. There was the epoch of 
agitation, from 1831 to 1850, when Garrison 
and his friends insisted upon " the imme- 
diate and unconditional emancipation of the 
slaves on the soil," and the agitation was 
kept up by men who " would not retreat, 
who would not equivocate, who would not 
be silent and who would be heard.'* Then 
came the stage when men tried legislative pal- 
liatives ; w^hen all manner of political medic- 
aments and poultices were tried as cures, 
which were about as effective in destroying 
the poison as a porous plaster would be to 
draw out the fire from a volcano. For 
i6o 



Influence of the Great Debate 

more than sixty years a veil had hung before 
men's minds, and it was as if they saw slaves 
as trees walking, in an unreal world. The 
sea captain fears a fog more than an equi- 
noctial storm. When the mist falls, and ob- 
scures the glass, and the ship is surrounded 
with white darkness, and the surf is thunder- 
ing on some Nantucket, as a graveyard of 
the sea, the captain longs for a cold, sharp 
wind out of the North, to cut the fog and 
bring out the stars and sun. And not other- 
wise was it with the great debate between 
Lincoln and Douglas — it lifted the veil from 
men's eyes, it swept the fog out of the air, it 
made the issue clear. Then it was that for 
the first time the North saw that the conflict 
was inevitable, because the Union could not 
endure permanently, half slave and half free ; 
saw that liberty and slavery were as irrecon- 
cilable as day and night. 

Before considering the influence of Lin- 
coln's clear thinking and speaking upon the 
eternal principles of right, we must note the 
general reawakening of the popular intelli- 
gence which preceded it, and which was due to 
two causes, the panic of 1857 and the religious 
revival which swept over the land during the 
same year. As the Northern merchant be- 
i6i 



Lincoln and Douglas 

gan to see that the South had determined to 
secede and try her fate alone, he became 
afraid to sell his goods to Southern customers. 
The Northern manufacturer, in turn, was 
overstocked, and if the banker called his 
loans there was no response, for the chain 
was broken; the result was the panic of 
1857, Hunger and Want stalked through 
the land— Winter and Poverty became bosom 
friends. Black despair fell upon the people 
and in the hour of need they cried unto God, 
and God heard them. 

When a nation prospers and grows rich, 
religion languishes. When nations enter 
upon disaster and peril, the people turn unto 
God. Abundance enervates. Morals always 
sink to a low level when men's eyes stand out 
with fatness. 

What agitation, what the liberator and the 
lecture platform, what statesmen and com- 
promisers could not achieve, was accom- 
plished by the spirit of God working upon 
the hearts of men, clarifying the intellect, 
deepening the sympathy and lending vigour 
to the will. 

The first thing the leader of an orchestra 
does is to see to it that the instruments are 
all unified and brought up to concert pitch, 
162 



Influence of the Great Debate 

and the revival of religion made the people 
one in self-sacrifice and their willingness to 
live and die for their convictions. 

Multitudes returned to the churches. 
Thoughtless youth discovered that there are 
only two great things in the universe — God 
and the soul. Personal religion became the 
supreme interest of the hour. Men went 
into the crucible commonplace ; they came 
out of it heroic stuff. All over the country 
the churches were open every night in the 
week. Moving across the country the 
traveller saw the candles burning in the little 
schoolhouses, while the farmers assembled 
to pray and read God's word. The Fulton 
Street prayer-meeting in Xew York attracted 
the interest of the nation. The morning 
newspapers of 1S5S carried columns concern- 
ing the business men's noon prayer-meeting, 
just as to-day they carry the column on the 
stock news and the stock market. In his 
" History of the United States " Khodes calls 
attention to the fact that 230 persons joined 
Plymouth Church on profession of faith on 
a single Sunday morning. That revival all 
over the land put its moral stamp upon boys 
and girls who afterwards became the leaders 
of the generation. 

163 



Lincoln and Douglas 

Kow every reform and ever}^ great waj 
for principle proceeds along intellectual lines 
clearly laid out. Twenty -seven years before 
the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the " Tariff of 
Abominations " had brought up the question 
of the right of the Southern states to secede. 
Calhoun had set up his famous doctrine, and 
Webster, in his " Second Reply to Hayne," 
had knocked it down. The feeling had been 
intense, but Webster's wonderful oration in 
defense of the Constitution and the Union 
had succeeded in meeting the crisis, and 
settling for a time the vexing problem. Yet 
the evil of slavery continued its fatal gnawing 
at the heart of the nation. By 1855-6 the 
old question was up again in much the same 
form. The atmosphere was clouded, the 
black shroud of the approaching storm al- 
ready discernible on the horizon. A hun- 
dred minor problems united in complicating 
the discussion of the one all-important thing. 
Another leader was wanted to set the battle 
in array, to mark out the lines of conflict. 
AVebster and Calhoun were gone, but an- 
other was to come to preserve " liberty and 
union, one and inseparable.'' This man was 
Abraham Lincoln, and the opponent who 
was to call out his clearest expositions of the 
164 



Influence of the Great Debate 

situation, and spur him on to his greatest 
arguments, was Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. 
Douglas was born in 1813, in Brandon, 
"Vermont. His father was a physician of 
great promise, who fell with a stroke of apo- 
plexy at a moment when he was carrying the 
child Stephen in his arms. The ambitions 
of the father for intellectual leadership were 
fulfilled in the son, who at fifteen years 
of age had attracted the notice of the 
best minds in his region. Strong men be- 
came interested in the boy, and advised his 
mother to take him to a relative in Canan- 
daio:aa, N. Y., where there was an excellent 
academy. At seventeen he entered a 
lawyer's office, attended every trial before 
the justice of the peace or the county clerk, 
and made a local reputation as a student of 
politics and law. At twenty years of age, 
he started West, to make his fortune, but 
fell ill in Cleveland, O., and all but lost his 
life. A few months later he entered the 
town of Winchester, 111., a stranger, in a 
strange land. He carried his coat on one 
arm and a little bundle of clothes on the 
other. There was a crowd on the corner of 
the street, where an auctioneer was selling 
the personal effects and live stock of some 

165 



Lincoln and Douglas 

settler, and within a few minutes Douglas 
was engaged as clerk at the auction. At the 
end of three days he found himself the pos- 
sessor of six dollars, which was the first 
money he had ever earned, and what was 
far more important, he had by his accuracy, 
good nature and kindliness won the hearts of 
the purchasers, and attracted the attention 
of the two or thi^ee leading men of the town. 
That winter he opened a private school, in 
which forty scholars were enrolled, while he 
continued his studies of law during the long 
evenings. Ten crowded and successful years 
soon swept by, and those years held remark- 
able achievements. He was admitted to the 
bar, elected to the Legislature, made Secre- 
tary of State, judge of the Supreme Court, 
and at thirty was sent to Congress. He spent 
three years in Congress ; at thirty-six was 
chosen to fill out an unexpired term in the 
Senate, was reelected to represent Illinois, 
and a third time was chosen senator — a 
career of uniform and splendid success from 
the material view-point. 

But the career of Douglas in Washington 

was the career of an opportunist, at once full 

of good and full of evil, full of right and full 

of wrong. He was a born politician, an ex- 

i66 



Influence of the Great Debate 

pert manager of men and a natural machine 
builder. Many others outranked Douglas in 
set speeches, but few equalled him in " catch 
as catch can " methods of the politician. 
What Douglas prided himself upon was his 
skill in getting through the committee meas- 
ures that were difficult to pass. When it 
became necessary to get a man's vote for his 
measure, Douglas would put that man up as 
a leader, give him the glory, obliterate him- 
self, and after the bill was passed, hop up 
like a jack in the pulpit, as the real manager 
who manoeuvred the bill through the Senate. 
He spent two years on the legislation that 
brought about the Illinois Central Railroad, 
and as long a time in founding the Uni- 
versity of Chicago. 

Often Douglas did things that he believed 
to be morally wrong because he discovered 
that they were politically necessary. For 
example, a reaction followed upon the elec- 
tion of the Democrat, James K. Polk, to the 
presidency. When his leadership was im- 
perilled, Polk cast about for some issue that 
would bring together the remnants of his 
party, and restore leadership, and he hit 
upon the device of the Mexican War. 'No 
party was ever defeated that was fighting 
167 



Lincoln and Douglas 

a war for the defense of the country. 
Douglas criticized Polk most sharply, charged 
the war upon Polk as a crime against the 
people, and yet, under the whip of party 
policy, Douglas supported Polk. Slowly he 
deteriorated in his moral fibre. One by one 
the moral lights seem to have gone out. He 
was intoxicated by his own success. Ambi- 
tion deluded him. He began to follow the 
will-o'-the-wisp, the light that rises from pu- 
trescence and decay in the swamp, and forgot 
the eternal stars in God's sky. In 185^ he 
entered the valley of decision, and lilce the 
rich young ruler made the great refusal, and 
chose compromise instead of principle. Later 
Douglas led his party along a false route, and 
became a mistaken leader. 

The circumstances were these ; the com- 
promise measm'es of 1850 had succeeded ap- 
parently in achieving the aim of their author, 
Henry Clay. The close of the year 1853 
was marked by political repose and calm. 
The slavery question seemed practically 
settled. As President Pierce expressed it 
in his message, " A sense of security " had 
been " restored to the public mind through- 
out the Confederacy.*' Prosperity was bless- 
ing the country, times were good, the future 
1 68 



Influence of the Great Debate 

bright with the promise of immense industrial 
achievements. In Congress, a bill for the 
organization of the territory of ISTebraska 
had passed the House at the previous session, 
and was being reported to the Senate, but 
the bill was in the usual form and contained 
no reference to slavery. Suddenly the press 
announced that Senator Douglas had read a 
report on this bill, purporting to show that 
the compromise measures of 1850 had es- 
tablished a great principle ; that this prin- 
ciple stated the perpetual right of the 
residents of new States to decide all ques- 
tions pertaming to slavery ; and that there- 
fore, contrary to the old Missouri Com- 
promise, ruling slavery out of that North- 
west territory, it left the slavery question 
entirely in the hands of the residents of the 
new territory of Nebraska. 

The announcement created a profound sen- 
sation. Twelve days later a Kentucky sen- 
ator by the name of Dixon introduced an 
amendment to the Nebraska Act, providing 
for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. 
The daring of this move startled even Doug- 
las, but within a few days the Illinois senator 
had decided to support the Dixon Amend- 
ment. With all the skill and political engi- 
169 



Lincoln and Douglas 

neering at his command, he steered the bill 
through the tempest which immediately rose 
against it like a tidal wave ; and on the third 
of March, in spite of protests which poured 
in from every State in the Xorth, in spite of 
indignation meetings held in New York, Bos- 
ton and Philadelphia, in spite of the oppo- 
sition of the leaders like Seward, Chase and 
Simmer, he actually succeeded in persuad- 
ing the Senate to pass the bill. That he was 
able to do this, is a great tribute to his powers 
as a politician and as an orator. He spoke 
from midnight until dawn, employing every 
possible trick of rhetoric and logic to carry 
his point, and showing a courtesy and re- 
straint in his attack which won the sympathy 
even of his opponents. "Xever had a bad 
cause been more splendidly advocated." 

But the victory was a costly one ; he had 
made the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter 
in the North; he had introduced a new 
term, "popular sovereignty," which was to 
rouse the nation as a red rag rouses a bull. 
He had started a storm, wrote Seward, 
"such as this country has never yet seen." 
Every great newspaper editor in the North, 
— Greeley, Dana, Raymond, Webb, Bigelow, 
Weed, — broke into violent protest against 
170 



Influence of the Great Debate 

the bill. Not since the fight at Lexington 
had such a fierce and universal cry of re- 
proach arisen in the land. 

And for what had he done all this ? Sim- 
ply that he might increase his chances of ob- 
taining the presidential nomination in 1856. 
The "solid South" had just begun to be 
spoken of. Douglas was an acute observer, 
and he saw that if he could secure the back- 
ing of the South, he would have an immense 
advantage over his rival Cass. It is said that 
his objection to the Dixon Amendment was 
overborne solely by the fear that Cass would 
be before him in supporting it, and thus win 
the favour of the South. It is the old story 
of the mess of pottage. Douglas afterwards 
tried to defend himself on the ground that 
he was offering to the Democratic party 
" fresh ammunition," but all knew, and none 
better than Douglas, that the Democratic 
party was in no need of a fresh issue. He 
had ruthlessly destroyed the peace of the 
whole nation, for the sake of promoting his 
own selfish interests, — and that, in vain ; as 
in 1853, Douglas failed to secure the Demo- 
cratic nomination for the presidency in 1856, 
which was won by Buchanan. 

The bill cost Douglas his prestige, and 
i;i 



Lincoln and Douglas 

lost him the confidence of one half the peo- 
ple of Chicago and Illinois. His friends 
called him home in the hope that he might 
win back the popularity he had lost. But 
Chicago would have none of him. He en- 
tered the city unwelcomed, had to hire a 
building in which to speak, advertised his 
own meeting, and on the day of the meeting 
found the flags at half-mast, while the church 
bells tolled the funeral of liberty, where 
hitherto the bells had pealed the notes of joy. 
It is impossible not to admire Douglas's 
courage in that trying ordeal. He found 
the hall filled with his opponents, yet he be- 
gan by saying, " My fellow citizens, I appear 
before you to vindicate the Kansas-Xebraska 
Bill." The words evoked a perfect tumult, 
which continued for half an hour. He ap- 
pealed to their sense of fair play and honour, 
but they asked him whether he had played 
fair with liberty in Washington. Growing 
angrj^, he tried to denounce them as cowards, 
afraid to listen to a discussion, and they an- 
swered that it was cowardl}^ to desert a 
slave who needed a defender. At eleven 
o'clock he flung his arms m the air and dared 
them to shoot, because a man had waved a 
pistol. The crowd answered with a shower 
i;2 



Influence of the Great Debate 

of eggs, while a man shouted that bullets 
were too valuable to be wasted on traitors. 
At twelve o'clock the bells rang out the mid- 
night. Douglas pulled out his watch and 
shouted, " It is midnight. I am going home 
and to church, and you may go to Hades ! " 
Douglas met a mob in Chicago, just as 
Beecher met a mob in England. But 
Beecher conquered his mob in Manchester; 
the mob in Chicago conquered Douglas. 
Beecher won, because he was right and the 
mob was wrong ; Douglas lost, because he 
was wrong and the mob was right. " You can 
fool all of the people some of the time, and 
you can fool some of the people all the tune ; 
you cannot fool all of the people all of the 
time" on the great principles of liberty. 
Douglas's Kansas-Kebraska Bill brought on 
an era of civil war in Kansas, sent the guer- 
rillas over the Sunflower State, burned Law- 
rence, destroyed the State government and 
filled the whole land with tumult and bitter- 
ness. And it cost Douglas his fame and 
place among the great men of the Kepublic. 
In that critical hour for liberty, Abraham 
Lincoln entered upon the scene, and chal- 
lenged Douglas to a debate. It was in the 
summer of 1S5S. Both men were candi- 
i;3 



Lincoln and Douglas 

dates for the Senate — Lincoln, the leader 
of the new Kepublican party State ticket ; 
Douglas, the best Imown figure in the land 
since the death of Clay and Webster. No 
contrast between two men could have been 
greater. Lincoln was tall, angular, lanky, 
awkward, six feet four inches in height. 
Douglas was short, thick-set, graceful, pol- 
ished, a man of fine presence, Tvith a great, 
beautiful head, a high forehead, square chin, 
perfectly at home on the platform, a master 
of all the tricks of debate, a born king of as- 
semblies. Lincoln was the stronger man, 
Douglas the more polished. Lincoln was the 
better thinker, Douglas the better orator. 
Lincoln relied upon fundamental principles, 
Douglas wanted to win his case. Lincoln's 
mind was analytical, and he loved to take a 
theme and unfold it, peeling it like an onion, 
layer by layer. For Douglas, an oration was 
a pile of ideas, three hours high. Lincoln's 
voice was a high dnsty tenor, with small 
range, and monotonous ; Douglas's voice was 
a magnificent vocal instrument, extending 
from the flute-like tone to the deepest roar. 
Lincoln lacked every grace of the great ora- 
tor ; Douglas had every art that makes the 
speaker master of his audience. Morally, 
174 



Influence of the Great Debate 

Lincoln's essential qualities were his honesty, 
fairness, and his spirit of good will. Intellec- 
tually, he was a thinker, slow, intense, pro- 
found, always trying to find a mother princi- 
ple that would explain a concrete fact. He 
was reared in childhood on three works — the 
Bible, Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress "and the 
Constitution of the United States. The style 
of the parable of Jesus and the simple words 
of the " Pilgrim's Progress " entered into his 
thinking like iron into the rich blood of the 
physical system. His thought was as clear 
as crystal, his language the simple home 
words, full of music and old associations. 
Lincoln knew what he wanted to say, said 
it, and sat down. Douglas stormed, threat- 
ened, cajoled, bribed, and could not stop 
until he had carried his audience. Lincoln 
wanted to get the truth out ; Douglas wanted 
to win a crowd over. The one was a states- 
man, the other was an opportunist, struggling 
for place. Principles are eternal, and because 
Lincoln loved principles, Lincoln belongs to 
the ages. Douglas wanted office, and because 
the longest office is six years, when the six 
years were over, the people put another man 
in his niche ; Douglas practically disappeared. 
The interest of the people in the seven 
175 



Lincoln and Douglas 

great joint debates arranged for this sena- 
torial campaign was beyond all description. 
Douglas travelled in a special train and car, 
with a fiat car carrjdng a cannon that 
boomed the announcement of his arrival. He 
had the wealth and prestige of the Illinois 
Central Eailroad to support him. Lincoln 
trusted to some friend to drive him across 
country, or had to be contented with a seat 
in a caboose of a freight train, waiting on a 
switch at a siding, while Douglas's special 
went whizzing by. The people of each county 
made the day of the debate a great holi- 
day. From daylight until noon all the con- 
verging roads were crowded with wagons, 
carts and buggies, loaded with people, while 
other thousands hurried on foot along the 
dusty road to the meeting place. From the 
first Douglas knew his peril, in that the eyes 
of the nation were fixed upon his platform, 
and that if Lincoln won the debate he won 
everything. He paid Lincoln the compli- 
ment of saying, " He is the strong man of 
his party, full of wit, facts, dates, and the 
best stump-speaker, with his droll ways and 
his dry jokes, in the "West. He is as honest 
as he is shrewd, and if I beat him my victory 
will be hardly won." 

176 



Influence of the Great Debate 

Yery different was the praise that Lin- 
coln gave Douglas, as he contrasted the daz- 
zling fame of the great senator with his own 
unknown name. " With me," said Lincoln, 
" the race of ambition has been a failure, 
a flat failure ; with him it has been one of 
splendid success. I aifect no contempt for 
the high eminence he has reached ; . . . 
I would rather stand on that eminence than 
wear the richest crown that ever pressed a 
monarch's brow." Douglas's speeches do not 
read well, and there are no nuggets, proverbs, 
bright sayings or brilliant epigrams which 
one can quote. The substance of his speeches 
was one and the same, for he traversed the 
same ground in each of the seven debates, 
urging ever that the new Eepublican party 
was simply disguised abolitionism, that 
Lincoln wanted to repeal the Fugitive Slave 
Law, establish the equality of the blacks, that 
this was a threat of war against the South, 
and therefore revolutionary and sectional. 
Over against this mark consider the clarity 
of Lincoln's method of thinking and speak- 
ing. 

In his address to the convention, accepting 
the senatorial nomination, he had said : " If 
we could first know where we are and 
177 



Lincoln and Douglas 

whither we are tending, we could better 
judge what to do and how to do it. TV^e are 
now far into the fifth year since a policy was 
initiated with the avowed object and confi- 
dent promise of putting an end to slavery agi- 
tation. Under the operation of that policy 
that agitation has not only not ceased, but 
has constantly augmented. In my opinion 
it will not cease until a crisis has been 
reached and passed. A house divided 
against itself cannot stand. I believe this 
government cannot endure permanently half 
slave and half free. I do not expect the 
Union to be dissolved ; I do not expect the 
house to fall ; but I do expect it will cease to 
be divided. It will become all one thing or 
all the other." 

When the campaign opened he challenged 
Douglas to the debate, and the critical con- 
test began. 

After several meetings, in which the 
senator proved himself a slippery wrestler, 
Lincoln determined to force Douglas into a 
corner. He wrote a question, and with such 
skill that Douglas was compelled to answer 
one way or the other, either answer being 
fatal to his political ambition. When Lin- 
coln read this question to his advisers, 
i;8 



Influence of the Great Debate 

Medill, Washbiu'ne and Judd, all begged him 
not to ask it, saying that it would cost him 
the senatorship. " Yes, but my loss of the 
senatorship is nothing. Later on it will cost 
Douglas the presidency. I am killing bigger 
game. The battle of 1860 is worth a hun- 
dred of 1858." The question with which 
Douglas was confronted was this : " Can the 
people of any United States territory, in any 
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen 
of the United States, exclude slavery from 
its limit prior to the formation of a State 
constitution ? " 

What a path perilous was this for Douglas's 
feet ! The path up the edge of the Matter- 
horn is a foot wide, yet it is granite, even if 
the climber does look down thousands of feet 
upon his right and thousands of feet upon his 
left. But Lincoln made Douglas walk not 
upon a narrow granite way, but on a sharp 
sword. He who tries to walk a tight rope 
across Niagara has two alternatives — he 
either arrives, or he does not. Yonder is 
Stephen Douglas, trying to walk a tightrope 
over the Niagara. 

Forced to an answer, Douglas finally 
spoke : 

"It matters not what way the Supreme 
1 79 



Lincoln and Douglas 

Court may hereafter decide as to the ab- 
stract question whether slavery may or may 
not go into any territory under a constitu- 
tion. The people have the lawful means to 
exclude it if they please, for the reason that 
slavery cannot exist a day or an hour any- 
where unless it is supported by local police 
legislation. Those police regulations can 
only be established by the local legislature ; 
and if the people are opposed to slavery they 
will elect representatives to that body who 
will by unfriendly legislation effectually 
prevent its introduction into their midst ; if, 
on the contrary, they are for it, their legis- 
lation will favour its extension." Douglas 
had decided. Southern newspapers took up 
his statement and the tide of anger rose 
against the " little giant " that cost him the 
presidency. Lincoln had digged a pitfall for 
unwary feet, and the great opportunist fell 
therein. 

After this, Douglas became bitter, excited, 
and increasingly angry, for the tide was 
plainly beginning to run against him. Lin- 
coln's speeches fairly blazed w^ith quotable 
sentences. " If you think you can slander a 
w^oman into loving you, or a man into voting 
for you, try it till you are satisfied." Again : 
1 80 



Influence of the Great Debate 

"Has Douglas the exclusive right in this 
country to be on all sides of all questions ? " 
Again : " The plainest print cannot be read 
through a gold eagle." Again : " Douglas 
shirks the responsibility of pulling the na- 
tional house down, but he digs under it, that 
it may fall of its own weight." 

To the astonishment of the country, when 
the debate was over, Lincoln carried Illinois 
on the popular vote, although he lost the 
senatorship through the arrangement of leg- 
islative districts that gave the election to the 
Democrats. Disappointed, Lincoln retained 
his good humour, and laughed over what he 
called the little episode. " I feel," said Lin- 
coln, " like the boy who stubbed his toe ; it 
hurt too hard to laugh, and he was too big 
to cry. But I have been heard on the great 
subject of the age, and though I now sink out 
of view and shall be forgotten, I believe I 
have made some marks which will tell for 
the cause of civil liberty long after I am 
gone." 

Lincoln had now become a national figure. 
In February, 1860, Mr. Beecher and Hemy 
C. Bowen invited him to speak in Xew York. 
The first plan was for him to speak in Plym- 
outh Church, but later considerations led to a 
i8i 



Lincoln and Douglas 

change to Cooper Institute. Lincoln arrived 
in the city late in the week ; on Sunday morn- 
ing he heard Mr. Beecher preach. He sat 
in the Bowen pew, just back of the Beecher 
pew, in the morning ; in the evening he ar- 
rived very late, and sat in a front pew, m the 
gallery, with Mr. Bowen and a friend who 
had waited in the hall for Mr. Lincoln's ar- 
rival. Lincoln spent the afternoon at the 
Sunday-school mission, over in Five Points. 
As the superintendent of the mission was al- 
ways casting about for somebody to talk to 
his ragamuffins, he asked the tall stranger if 
he would say a few words. When they 
reached the platform, the superintendent 
asked Lincoln by what name he should intro- 
duce him, to which Lincoln gave the answer, 
"Tell them Abraham Lincoln of Illinois," 
which was answer enough. The meeting the 
next day in Cooper Institute was perhaps the 
most memorable assembly ever held in Kew 
York. William Cullen Bryant presided, 
Horace Greeley sat on Lincoln's right, Peter 
Cooper close by. "Xo man," said the 
Trihime^ " since the days of Clay and Web- 
ster, spoke to a larger assemblage of the in- 
tellect and mental culture of our city. The 
speech was packed with reason, facts, but 
182 



Influence of the Great Debate 

stripped bare of rhetorical flourish. Its key- 
note was, ' Let us have faith that right makes 
might, and in that faith let us to the end dare 
to do our dutj as we understand it.' " Four 
morning newspapers leported the speech in 
full, and Greeley called him the Great Con- 
vincer, saying no man ever before made such 
an impression in his first appeal to a New 
York audience. That speech probably made 
Lincoln President. 

By universal consent, Lincoln's nomination 
in 1860 is one of the mysteries of politics. 
Every man of light and leading conceded 
Seward's nomination in advance, and two- 
thirds of the delegates went to the conven- 
tion pledged, while eight of the Illinois 
delegates were against Lincoln in his own 
State. The East could not believe that the 
sceptre could pass from their hands. Special 
trains from ^N'ew York carried brilliant ban- 
ners, and JSTew York bands and drilled clubs 
marched and countermarched up and down 
the streets of Chicago. A great wooden 
wigwam set up for the occasion held 10,000 
spectators. The placing of Seward in nomi- 
nation was wildly applauded. But, to the 
surprise of everybody, the naming of Lincoln 
was the signal of an outburst of such en- 
183 



Lincoln and Douglas 

thusiasm as had never been kno^vn. Men 
held theu' breath as the votes were registered. 
Seward had 173^ against Lincoln's 102. As 
noted in a former chapter, it has been thought 
that Horace Greeley's standing out for Gov- 
ernor Bates of Missouri made possible the 
shifting of votes for another Western man. 
At all events, on the third ballot Lincoln was 
nominated. JSTow hundreds of correspond- 
ents began to write stories of this great un- 
known. The next day Wendell Phillips de- 
manded from Boston : " Who is this county 
court advocate ? " But there was a man in 
Washington who could speak intelhgently 
concerning the great unknown — his name 
was Stephen A. Douglas. 

In that hour Douglas knew the great mis- 
take he had made. The Democratic con- 
vention of that year at Charleston split their 
party asunder; the Southerners clamoring 
for secession should Lincoln be elected, and 
nominating John C. Breckinridge of Ken- 
tucky ; the Northerners standing fast for the 
Union and compromise, and nominating 
Stephen A. Douglas; while a "Constitu- 
tional Union " party of old-line Whigs nomi- 
nated John Bell of Tennessee. Lincoln's 
election was the signal foi* secession. 
184 



Influence of the Great Debate 

In all the subsequent turmoil, Douglas 
vigorously sustained the Union and the Con- 
stitution, both in Congress and before the 
people. When Sumter -^vas fired upon, he 
hastened to pledge his influence to Lincoln 
as well as to the Union. " There are no 
neutrals in this war — only patriots and 
traitors." Douglas hurried back to Illinois 
to unify the state for the Union; he had 
borrowed $80,000 for his campaign, and he 
staggered under the burden of debt. Also 
he had injured his constitution by excess, and 
burned the candle at both ends by overwork. 
But above all else was the thought that he 
had made the great mistake, and lost his 
place in history, in saying that he did not 
care whether a new State voted slavery up or 
voted slavery down. During his last sick- 
ness he murmured incessantly, "Failure — I 
have failed." His last words were : " Tele- 
graph to the President and let the columns 
move on." 

Douglas died on June 3, 1861, at the age 
of forty-eight. The lesson of his life is the 
danger of compromise, the peril of refusing 
adherence to the highest ideals of principle, 
and the failure of expediency and oppor- 
tunism. 

185 



Lincoln and Douglas 

As Douglas's star went down, Lincoln's 
star began to climb the sky. It was Douglas 
himself who held Lincoln's hat while he 
made his first inaugural address. Bj the 
irony of fate it was Chief Justice Taney of 
the Dred Scott Decision who inaugurated 
Lincoln into office, that Lincoln might later 
make Taney's decision forever null and void. 

And that no dramatic note might be 
wanted, both Taney and Douglas heard Lin- 
coln plead with indescribable pathos, majesty 
and beauty, for the very Union whose exist- 
ence their words had threatened. "Physi- 
cally speaking, we [the Xorth and South] can- 
not separate. ^Ve cannot remove our respect- 
ive sections from each other, nor build an 
impassable wall between them. Can aliens 
make treaties easier than friends can make 
laws ? Can treaties be more faithfully en- 
forced between aliens than laws can among 
friends? Suppose you go to war? You 
cannot fight always, and after much loss on 
both sides and no gain on either, you cease 
fighting, the identical old questions as to 
terms of intercourse are again upon you. In 
your hands, my dissatisfied fellow country- 
men, and not in mine, is the momentous issue 
of civil war. The government will not assail 
1 86 



Influence of the Great Debate 

you. You can have no conflict without being 
yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath 
registered in heaven to destroy the govern- 
ment, while I shall have the most solemn 
one to preserve, protect and defend it. I am 
loath to close. We are not enemies, but 
friends. We must not be enemies. Though 
passion may have strained, it must not break 
our bonds of affection. The mystic chords 
of memory, stretching from every battle-field 
and patriotic grave to every living heart and 
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
swell the chorus of the Union when again 
touched, as surely they will be, by the better 
angels of our nature." 

But the great debate through arguments 
was ended. Henceforth, the appeal was to 
arms. 



187 



YIII 

REASONS FOR SECESSION: SOUTH- 
ERX LEADERS 

THE seven debates between Lincoln and 
Douglas convinced both the North and 
the South : but, confirming the one for union 
and liberty, it confirmed the other for inde- 
pendence and slavery. Lincoln convinced 
the North that the Union could not endure 
permanently half slave and half free ; on the 
other hand, the South saw just as clearly 
that the Union, if it endured, must become 
all free or all slave. When the men of light 
and leading in the North fully under- 
stood Lincoln's " House-divided-against-it- 
self " speech, they went over to the Repub- 
lican party, and nominated and elected Lin- 
coln president, that he might put slavery in 
a position of gradual extinction, by forbid- 
ding its future growth. The South acted 
witli even greater energy and decision, by 
making ready to secede, and arming her 
citizens for the defense of slavery. The great 
debate, through words, had lasted thirty 
4 88 



Southern Leaders 

years ; now the South made its appeal to 
regiments of armed men. 

At that moment slavery controlled the 
President, the Cabinet, the Senate and the 
House. And yet immediately after the elec- 
tion, and before the inauguration of Lincoln, 
the Secretary of War, Floyd, secretly began 
the transfer of munitions of war from the 
nation's arsenals to the Southern States. 

Late one December day in 1860, a South- 
ern gentleman hastened to the White House. 
On the steps he met an old friend who had 
just left Buchanan. Waving his hat, he 
shouted, " This is a glorious day ! South 
Carolina has seceded ! " That night an im- 
promptu banquet was held in Washington, at 
which the Southern leaders drank to the 
success of the slave empire that was to be 
founded, and talked about a Southern army, 
a Southern navy, the annexation of Mexico 
and the West India Islands. Then swiftly 
followed the secession of Alabama, Missis- 
sippi, Louisiana, Texas and Florida. 

Almost every week during the winter of 
1861 witnessed the spectacle of Southern 
Senators and Representatives saying good-bye 
to Congress and announcing the withdrawal 
of their State from the Union. Those were 
189 



Reasons For Secession 

days of thick darkness at AYasliington. 
Gloom fell upon the North. Already the 
shadow of the great eclipse was stealing 
across the face of Abraham Lincoln. It 
seemed as if the government, "conceived 
in liberty and dedicated to the proposition 
that all men were created equal," was about 
to "perish from the earth." Hamilton had 
ca ed the Kepublic " the last, best hope of 
earth." Burke had characterized the Con- 
stitution " an event as wonderful as if a new 
star had arisen on the horizon to shine as 
bright as the planets." Now the star was to 
fall out of the sky ! Up to the day of his 
inauguration Lincoln could not believe the 
South would ever fire on the flag, or take up 
arms against the Union. " We are friends, 
and not enemies — we must not be enemies." 
But it was not to be as Lincoln wished. 
There are some diseases so terrible that they 
must be cured by the knife and the cautery. 
Slavery had fastened on the very vitals of 
the South. Therefore, God permitted the 
surgery of war. 

Lincoln's inaugural address on March 4, 
1861, caused a certain solemn hush to fall 
upon the land. Its logic, the facts it con- 
tained, the principles it presented, were so 
190 



Southern Leaders 

convincing for the intellect and yet so suf- 
fused with pathos and beauty and majesty, 
that the people, North and South alike, stood 
uncertain and expectant. 

But the silence was premonitory. In sum- 
mer, after a hot, sultry day, when the great 
city has exhaled poisonous gases, the clouds 
are piled mountain high on the horizon. 
Then a hush comes. Not a leaf stirs. It is 
hard to breathe. Suddenly one bolt leaps 
from the east to the west — the precursor of 
ten thousand fiery darts that are to burn the 
poison away, and of the heavy rains and 
winds that will wash the air and make it 
sweet and clean. On the 12th of April the 
silence for the nation was broken by the shot 
fired at Fort Sumter. The bomb that went 
shrieking through the air was the precursor 
of a million men in arms, the most frightful 
carnage, the most terrible war in history, 
when brother took up arms against brother, 
and the whole land became one vast ceme- 
tery. 

It is often said that South Carolina fired 
on Fort Sumter and began an aggressive war 
to destroy the Union, before the South was 
ready. Probably the fact in the case is that 
South Carolina was trying to " fire the South- 
191 



Reasons For Secession 

ern heart," and force the State of Yirghiia 
into the secession movement. The Old 
Dominion State was naturally a Union State. 
It was a Virginian who uttered the most im- 
passioned words in the history of liberty — 
Patrick Henry at Williamsburg. It was a 
Yirginian who led the colonial armies to vic- 
tory — Washington. It was a Yirginian who 
wrote the Declaration of Independence — 
Thomas Jefferson. He too, a Yu'ginian gov- 
ernor, made the great protest to King George 
against the further imposition of slavery by 
force of arms. He too, a Yirginian, the 
founder of Washington and Jefferson Col- 
lege, had called upon the men of the Domin- 
ion State to rise up and destroy the curse of 
slavery. But from the moment when that 
shell rose through the pathless air, curved 
slightly and burst above Sumter, the die was 
cast. Five days later, Yirginia passed her 
ordinance of secession. 

Oh, if the veil could have been lifted from 
Beauregard's eyes when he began that bom- 
bardment ! If he could but have seen the 
riches become poverty, cities become a waste, 
happy homes a desolation, the Southern hill- 
sides covered with graves, the Southern plan- 
tations grown up with weeds, and the whole 
192 



Southern Leaders 

secession movement futile, what a vision 
would have fallen upon the soldier ! 

On the 15 th, President Lincoln called for 
75,000 troops. If he had asked for a million, 
the President would have had them. That 
shot had kindled a fire of patriotism that 
swept across the Xorth like a prairie fire. In 
one day the college students deserted the 
lecture halls, the students of law and medi- 
cine and theology closed their books, the 
farmer left his plow in the furrow, the woods- 
man dropped his ax, the carpenter his ham- 
mer, and the young men of twenty-three 
States sprang to arms. What astonished the 
South most of all was the attitude of Douglas, 
and the I^orthern Democrats, who had been 
confidently counted upon to stand by seces- 
sion. One Southern fire-eater had said that 
" Douglas and the Democrats will fight Lin- 
coln and the Eepublicans, and it will be 
another case of the Kilkenny cats, leaving 
the South in peace to build up a great em- 
pire." But the first thing that Stephen A. 
Douglas did was to go to the White House 
and pledge his support to Lincoln, as did the 
leading Democrats of the North. " The at- 
tack upon Sumter," said Douglas, " leaves us 
but two parties — patriots and traitors." And 
193 



Reasons For Secession 

now the war was on, — the one side fightuig 
for the Federal Union and liberty for all men, 
and the other side fighting for State sover- 
eignty and slavery. 

These great events bring us front to front 
with the question as to how Southern men 
justified their firing upon the old flag and 
attacking the Union. Let us confess that 
men do not make martyrs of themselves un- 
less they have a cause that commands the 
intellect and conquers the will. 

Skeptics used to say that the apostles m- 
vented the character of Jesus. As if men 
first of all invent a he and inflate a bubble 
myth, and then go out in support of it to 
get themselves mobbed, kicked thi^ough the 
streets, thrown from windows, tortured on 
the rack, crucified and burned alive after 
incredible heroism for thirty years ! To say 
that the disciples invented the story of Jesus 
and then martyred themselves for theh false- 
hood is as intellectually stupid and silly as it 
is morally monstrous I Kot otherwise these 
leading men of the South were men of the 
loftiest character, of great personal worth, 
patriotic, high-minded, and they did not dev- 
astate their land and martyr themselves for 
idle abstractions. Here is John C. Calhoun, 
194 



Southern Leaders 

ranked by all as one of the triumvirate — 
^^ebster, Calhoun and Clay. Here is Gen. 
Eobert E. Lee, of whom Lord Wolsey said 
that for one State to have given birth to two 
such men as Washington and Lee was to 
have lent it immortal renown. Lincoln and 
Grant and our Northern generals understood 
the Southern men, sympathized with them, 
and therefore because the intellect grasped 
their position, Grant's heart forgave Lee, 
and made the two friends. To understand 
this, go to-day to a great battle-field of that 
conflict and hear the Northern generals and 
the Southern generals rehearse the story of 
the Civil War, and you will understand the 
magnanimity of the Northern leader and 
the argument of the Southern soldier. His- 
tory has destroyed the old delusion that 
secession was a conspiracy, organized by a 
few malignant leaders. All historians to- 
day. Northern and Southern alike, concede 
that it was a great popular uprising of the 
Southern people. 

Indeed, it was not altogether a contest be- 
tween Northern blood on the one side, and 
Southern blood on the other. 

Twenty-one of the Southern generals who 
fought for the Rebellion were born in New 
195 



Reasons For Secession 

York and Kew England. Eighty distin- 
guished Confederate officers were born 
north of Mason and Dixon's line, were 
graduates of West Point, yet these Xorthern 
soldiers rejected Webster's argument for the 
Union, and accepted Calhoun's theory of 
State sovereignty. On the other hand, many 
of our greatest Union leaders were Southern 
men by birth and education, but as South- 
erners they rejected Calhoun's philosophy, 
and accepted Webster's. Yii^ginia gave us 
the commander-in-chief of our army. Gen. 
Winlield Scott ; gave us George H. Thomas, 
the Kock of Chickamauga. The South gave 
us Farragut, our greatest admiral. Twelve 
of the commanders of our battle-ships that 
captured the Mississippi Kiver and made it 
possible for Lincoln to say, " Once more the 
Father of Waters goes unvexed to the sea," 
were Southern men. The South also, through 
Kentucky, gave us the groat President, Abra- 
ham Lincoln. It was, therefore, in large 
measure, a philosophic contest. The LTnion 
forces were the disciples of Daniel Webster, 
w^hose spirit invisible rode upon the wings 
of the wind, and whose arm bore the gor- 
geous ensign, on which were written the 
words, " Liberty and Union." On the other 
196 



Southern Leaders 

hand, the Confederate forces were made up 
of the disciples of John C. Calhoun, who 
followed a banner on which the great citizen 
of South Carolina had inscribed these words, 
" Sovereignty is natural and inalienable ; 
government is secondary and artificial and 
can be changed at the will of the people." 
In terms of cannon and gun, Grant and Lee 
were the leaders of the two opposing armies, 
but fundamentally the two armies were led 
by Daniel Webster on the one side and John 
C. Calhoun on the other. 

Further, Calhoun's influence explains the 
attitude of the non-slaveholding South 
towards secession. Of the six million white 
people in the South, two millions of them 
did not own slaves, and most of these were 
opposed to the slave traffic. Thousands of 
Southerners freed their slaves before the 
war, and moved into Ohio and Pennsylvania. 
Other thousands declined to participate in 
the traffic. A North Carolinian named 
Ilinton Kowan Helper published in 1S57 a 
very striking volume called " The Impending 
Crisis in the South, and How to Meet It." 
Dedicated to the non-slaveholding w^hites, 
and not on behalf of the blacks, its theme 
was slavery as a blight upon Southern white 
197 



Reasons For Secession 

people and their institutions, and a political 
peril. Xot Garrison himself ever made so 
vigorous and powerful an arraignment of 
slavery as did this Southerner. Helper pro- 
nounced slavery the enemy of invention, the 
foe of manufacturing plants, an obstacle to 
the development of the land, a barrier to 
the progress of the sons of white men. He 
held that slavery starves to death masters in 
the long run, while for the moment it 
seemingly enriches them. Slavery was like 
sin, it wore the garb of an angel of light ; 
while secretly it sharpened a dagger, with 
which to stab to the heart the angel of 
civilization. Within two years this book 
sold over 150,000 copies, and set the whole 
South in a fever of unrest. Nevertheless, 
when the storm broke, the large non-slave- 
holding element in the South took up arms 
for the doctrine of State sovereignty. If 
they resented interference with slavery, it was 
because slavery was a Southern domestic in- 
stitution. But this was only an incident ; the 
one thing they wished was the vindication of 
the sovereignty of each State of the Union, 
and the right of its people to govern them- 
selves without regard to other States who 
had the same right of self-govermnent. 
198 



Southern Leaders 

The character of the Southern leaders 
throws light upon Calhoun's principle. Than 
Eobert E. Lee, what general has been more 
idolized by those who knew him best ? His 
first ancestor in America was a cavalier 
who left England rather than endure the 
tyranny of Charles 11. The son of " Light 
Horse Harry " of Eevolutionary fame, he 
loved the Union. Educated at West Point, 
he left the institution after four years with- 
out a demerit, and won distinction both in 
the army during the Mexican War, and later 
as an engineer. He was a man of such 
probity, purity and lofty character that his 
followers loved him to the point of worship. 
He was deeply religious, and the best ex- 
pression we can use is that Lee, like Enoch, 
walked with God. He was offered the posi- 
tion of commander-in-chief of the Northern 
forces. But he could not bear to lead an in- 
vading army against his old college, his an- 
cestral homestead, and against Washington's 
house at Mount Yernon, or become the 
enemy of his own people in Virginia. On 
April 17th, Virginia passed her ordinance of 
secession, and on the 20th, Lee resigned his 
commission in the United States army, be- 
cause he could not take part against his 
199 



Reasons For Secession 

native State, — " in whose behalf alone," he 
said, " will I ever again draw my sword." 
By the Calhoun doctrine, A^kginia was his 
country, and no one has ever doubted his 
sincerity. Lee is the Sir Philip Sidney of 
the Civil War. 

Wellington, the Iron Duke, is reported to 
have said, " A man of fine Christian sensi- 
bilities is totally unfit for the position of 
soldier." But Kobert E. Lee and Thomas 
J. Jackson prayed as they fought ; in ^4c- 
tory and in defeat alili:e they turned towards 
God. Jackson, who won the name of 
" Stonewall," might have been the son of old 
Ironsides himself. During his entire career 
he tm^ned his camps into revival meetings 
when he was on the Potomac and the Rap- 
pahannock, and was a Puritan of Puritans. 
It is said that literally hundi-eds of men who 
entered his regiments, careless, profane, 
drinking boys, went home to join churches 
on profession of their faith in Christ. After 
the battle of Bull Run, Jackson sent a letter 
home to his Presbyterian minister at Lexing- 
ton, Ya. The people assembled to hear the 
minister read the letter that would give an 
account of the conflict. It contained only 
one sentence : '' I forgot to send you my con- 

200 



Southern Leaders 

tribution for the coloured Sunday-school of 
which I am superintendent." When Jack- 
son lost his left arm, General Lee wrote to 
him, *' You have lost your left arm, but I 
have lost the right arm of my army." 
Eight days after, Jackson lay dying, having 
been accidentally shot by his own men at 
Chancellorsville. Suddenly he cried out, 
" Let us cross over the river and rest under 
the shade of the trees ; " a companion had 
just read the great general that verse in the 
Psalm, "There is a river whose streams 
make glad the city of God." These two 
men have been a fountain of inspii^ation to 
Southern youth, and their story makes a 
bright chapter in the history of all heroism. 
Southern leaders there were also who op- 
posed secession as inexpedient and wrong. 
One of the finest exponents of this group 
was Alexander H. Stephens, a self-made 
man, inured in childhood to hardship, and 
made sympathetic through his own struggles. 
Orphaned at fifteen, he worked his way 
through college ; admitted to the bar at 
twenty-two, he achieved fame as a lawyer ; 
elected to Congress, he was one of the noted 
figures in the House of Ptepresentatives for 
sixteen years. His slight physique and his 

201 



Reasons For Secession 

frail health were sad handicaps. He was 
dyspeptic, sleepless, a nervous wreck. He 
ordinarily weighed seventy-two pounds, and 
during the best yeai^ of his life only ninety- 
two. When in February, 1865, Lincoln met 
Stephens for a peace conference, he saw the 
commissioner take off a great outer coat, and 
unwrap layer after layer of tippet from his 
throat, peeling down and down, until finally 
there stood this tiny man. Lincoln whis- 
pered to his friend, "Did you ever see so 
small a nubbin that had so much husk on 
it?" 

Within ten days after the election of Lin- 
coln, Stephens began his campaign against 
secession. He urged that Lincoln was 
friendly to the South ; that he had neither 
the desire nor the power to destroy slavery ; 
that John Bro^vn's attack represented the 
individual and not the millions of the Xorth ; 
that nothing could be gained by haste nor 
lost by delay, and that the Southern people 
should heed Lincoln's inaugural. Finally, he 
despaired ; he wrote Toombs that " the South 
was wild with frenzy and passion — that whom 
the gods would destroy they first make 
mad." He afterwards explained his later ac- 
quiescence with secession by the statement 

202 



Southern Leaders 

that when two trains were running under full 
steam towards a head-on collision, he got off 
at the first station. 

As vice-president of the Confederacy, 
Stephens was not always in sympathy with 
Jefferson Davis ; he was very frank in 
his criticism of the Confederate leader. 
^' While I never have regarded Davis as a 
great man, or statesman on a large scale, or 
a man of any marked genius, yet I have re- 
garded him as a man of good intentions ; 
weak and vacillating, timid, petulant, peevish, 
obstinate, but not firm." 

To understand Jefferson Davis, however, 
we must take a broader outlook. 

Ehodes ventures the judgment that if the 
Pilgrim Fathers had settled in South Carolina 
they might have held slaves by 1850, and 
might have fought to maintain slavery ; while 
if the cavalier had settled in Boston, where 
the snow and the winter are unfriendly 
to the coloured man, the cavalier would have 
founded abolition societies. If all scholars 
do not see their way clear to fully accept 
Ehodes' statement, they must confess that the 
Scotch-Irish soldiers that followed Cromwell, 
and after the restoration of Charles II moved 
to ISTorth Carolina, at last became slave- 
203 



Reasons For Secession 

holders ; while many Southerners, young 
men who were educated in Xorthern colleges 
and married Northern girls, finally freed 
their slaves and moved Xorth, becoming 
abolitionists. Ch^cumstances, environment, 
and association, modify men so profoundly 
that Buckle believed that climate and grains 
determine men's civilization. 

Again, in IS 20, Northern leaders became 
alarmed at the invasion by slavery of the 
Northern and Western territories, and North- 
ern representatives threatened to withdraw 
from the Union if slaverj^ was extended, 
just as in 1861 the Southern leaders not 
only threatened but withdrew, — the only 
diiference being this, that the North would 
rather withdraw from the Union than have 
slavery, while the South preferred to secede 
rather than have free labour enforced. 

Nor must we forget that Calhoun's principle 
of the absolute independence of each State 
in political government is freely accepted by 
all Congregationalists in church government. 
In 1875, when a Congregational Association 
tried to interfere with Mr. Eeecher and the 
government of Plymouth Church, Plymouth 
told them plainly that every church is an in- 
dependent and self-governing organization, 
204 



Southern Leaders 

that sovereignty is natural and government 
artificial, and that government by the Asso- 
ciation might be transferred but had not been 
so transferred. The Congregational principle 
in church government is pure democracy. 

But the United States were a federal rep- 
resentative republic, under a constitution ; 
and, to recm^ again to ecclesiastical illustra- 
tion, the Presbyterian form of government is 
representative and federal. The Presbyte- 
rians base their government on our political 
institutions. For the political township, 
they have a Presbyterian church ; for the 
county, they set up the Presbytery ; for the 
State, they organized a synod ; for congress, 
they organized the General Assembly ; for 
the president, they substituted a moderator. 

In poKtics we believe in representative 
government, but as to the church, Congrega- 
tionalists believe in pure democracy, and the 
independent principle. 

Xow John C. Calhoun took this Congrega- 
tional principle and translated it into terms 
of politics, and called it the States' rights or 
State sovereignty theory. If John C. Cal- 
houn had been struggling, not for a political 
theory, but for an ecclesiastical one, Henry 
"Ward Beecher would have backed him to a 
205 



Reasons For Secession 

finish. If there is any one group of people 
on earth, therefore, ^yho ought not only to 
understand but to appreciate John C. Cal- 
houn's argument, they are the Independents. 
Now for twenty years John C. Calhoun went 
up and down the South, analyzing his argu- 
ment, explaining and enforcing it. At the 
very time Northern boys were reading in 
their readers Webster's speech for the Union, 
Southern boys were reciting Calhoun's speech 
for the independence of the States. 

Not in consequence of the Calhoun doc- 
trine but in harmony with it, having always 
held that the Union was subordinate to the 
sovereignty of the States, Jefferson Davis, 
United States senator from Mississippi, be- 
came the chief organizer of secession after 
Lincoln's election. A West Point graduate, a 
brilliant officer in Indian fights and the Mex- 
ican War, a governor of Mississippi, United 
States senator, a singularly efficient Secretary 
of War under President Pierce, and again 
an influential senator, a man of charming 
personality with many friends, Mr. Davis was 
so prominent in the secession movement that 
he was the free choice of the Southern peo- 
ple for president of their Confederacy. And, 
despite Mr. Stephens' opinion, he probably 
206 



Southern Leaders 

did as well in that difficult place as another 
could have done. To the end of his life he 
held to the doctrine of State sovereignty. 

But one question persistently forces itself 
into the foreground. Why was it that the 
people of the Xorth did not *' let the erring 
sisters go," to use Horace Greeley's expres- 
sion ? Just across the Northern line dwells 
another nation — Canada. Why should there 
not have been a second nation to the south 
of Mason and Dixon's line, with Mobile or 
N'ew Orleans for a capital — a great slave 
empire, that would have included Texas, 
Mexico and Central America ? The answer 
is very simple. The Constitution stood in 
the way. Men saw clearly that if this re- 
public, conceived in liberty and dedicated to 
the proposition that all men were created 
equal, could be destroyed by the minority, 
that would not respect the rights of the ma- 
jority, there was no hope for civilization save 
in the revival of despotism, with a monarch 
ruling the people by military force. The 
North by a majority of States and votes had 
chosen Lincoln, with his statement that the 
Union could not permanently endure, half 
slave and half free. The minority then an- 
swered : "If we cannot have our way, we 
207 



Reasons For Secession 

will destroy the governmeiit." Analyzed, 
this is seen to be sheer anarchy. 

In that hour men remembered what their 
fathers had endured to found the Kepublic 
and free mstitutions. When the news came 
of the attack upon Fort Sumter, the better 
angels of men's natures did touch '' the mys- 
tic chords of memorj^, stretching from every 
battle-field and patriot grave to every living 
heart and hearthstone all over this broad 
land," and the tones swelled the chorus of the 
Union. "What other land offered poor men an 
opportunity for office, wealth and honours, 
with full liberty of thought and speech ? Had 
not the fathers lived and died to make edu- 
cation democratic through the public schools ? 
Had not the fathers given life itself to estab- 
lish the freedom of the printing-press and 
freedom of discussion ? Had not the fathers 
bought at great price their political liberty, 
and the rights of the ballot ? Was not the 
land dedicated to toleration and charity in 
religion ? Was the work of Washington and 
Jefferson and Hamilton to go down in ruin 
and nothingness? While the old world, 
with her tyrannies, scoffed at the failure of 
the Kepublic, men thought of Bunker Hill 
and A^alley Forge and Yorktown. They 
208 



Southern Leaders 

thought of the Declaration of Independence 
and the Constitution. They recalled the 
tribute of one of the greatest of English 
statesmen, who characterized the American 
Constitution as " the greatest political in- 
strument ever struck off by the unaided 
genius of man." 

And now the Kepublic was to be destroyed, 
the Constitution torn into shreds and stamped 
under foot, the Declaration of Independence 
made a thing of jibes and scorn in the palaces 
of Madrid and Constantinople, while slavery, 
with black fingers, was to knit its claws into 
the throat of the angel of liberty and choke 
the life out. Suddenly men saw that the 
only way to insure Liberty for the white race 
was to destroy slavery for the black races. 
Men determined that the majority had their 
rights, and that these rights should not be 
wrested away by the minority, fighting in 
the interests of slavery. Democracy, the 
" last, best hope of earth," should not fail ! 
In that moment Liberty stretched forth her 
sceptre of justice, ''red with insufferable 
A\Tath," and her clarion voice rang to the 
outermost corners of the land. Three mil- 
lions of men assembled to swear fealty to 
God and country. Then they marched away, 
209 



Reasons For Secession 

through the towns and across the prairies, 
into thickets and swamps, to be pierced by 
bullets, torn by shells, to eat crusts, wear 
rags, shiver in the cold, burn in the heat, 
famish in the prison, welter in the bloody 
trench, above them a fiery hail, beside them 
their dying comrades falling into the arms of 
death. It is a strange, wild, chivah-ous, 
divine story of the world's greatest enthu- 
siasm, our fathers' enthusiasm for liberty and 
democracy ! What God thinks of freedom, 
is written in the price that people paid for 
it I What God thinks of slavery is m the 
woe and sorrow and wreckage it has always 
brought upon those who have sought to live 
on the sweat of other men's faces ! 

The Russian would not fight against the 
Japanese because the Russian peasant owned 
no lands, had no schoolhouse, no ballot box, 
no free printing-press, no religious liberty. 
The Russian stood sullenl}^ in the trenches 
and had to be flogged into the battle. If 
the Russian peasant lost, he lost nothing, be- 
cause he had nothing to lose ; if the peasant 
won, he gained nothing, because the Russian 
aristocrat and the baron took all of the treas- 
ure ; therefore he would not fight. But the 
Northern soldier had everything to fight for. 

210 



Southern Leaders 

No such treasures were ever thrown on the 
earth to be struggled for. Liberty and the 
Union were worth a thousand lives and ten 
thousand deaths. 

It was an awful and a gallant fight, waged 
by the finest of the world's manhood on both 
sides. The Southerner fought for local self- 
government and the right to enslave and 
govern other men ; the Northerner fought for 
universal self-government and the institu- 
tions which had made that possible without 
injustice to other men. There can be no 
choice as between the splendid qualities that 
entered into the contest — of sincerity, ear- 
nestness, devotion and fidelity on either 
side : but the South lost because slavery had 
eaten out the enduring vigour of its resources ; 
the North won because free labour and the 
rights of man had given it the greater effect- 
ive power. At last, the theory on which the 
South stood for self-justification crumbled 
under the supreme test. 



211 



IX 

HENEY WAKD BEECHER: THE 
APPEAL TO ENGLAND 

ONE November morning in tiie White 
House, Abraham Lincoln kept his 
Cabinet waiting while he finished reading a 
newspaper, containing an account of Beech- 
er's speeches in England. At last he laid the 
paper on the table before them, and in sub- 
stance said to Stanton, " AVhen this war is 
fought to a successful issue, this man, Henry 
Ward Beecher, will have earned the right to 
lift the old flag back to its place on Fort 
Sumter, for without these speeches England 
might have recognized the Confederacy, and 
then there might have been no flag to raise.'' 
Long time has passed since that Friday 
morning in the capital, and now all men 
recognize the justice of the words of the 
martyred President. History is a stern 
judge, and the centuries have given opportu- 
nity for contrast. When a great country, a 
great emergency, a critical hour, and a great 

212 



The Appeal to England 

man meet, a spark is struck out, called great 
eloquence. Such a conjunction of city, peril 
and man once met in Athens, and for twenty- 
four centuries boys have been translating 
Demosthenes' oration agamst Philip. De- 
mosthenes spoke, but Philip marched on. 
Greece bowed her neck to the yoke, and 
became subject to Macedonia ; Demosthenes 
failed. Another crisis came in Westminster 
Hall, in London, when Edmund Burke made 
his plea for the millions of outraged folk in 
India pillaged by Warren Hastings. But 
Hastings became a lord; he died honoured 
in his palace ; India was left to stagger on- 
ward ; Burke's splendid oratory failed. That 
was a great hour in the history of eloquence 
when Patrick Henry and Fisher Ames and 
Josiah Quincy became voices for liberty and 
the new republic. But these orators spoke 
to sympathetic hearers, and simply returned 
to the multitude in a flood what they had re- 
ceived from the people in dew and rain. 

Henry Ward Beecher spoke to mobs, 
pleaded with unfriendly critics, and was 
asked to change hate to love, ice to fire, 
weapons for attack into weapons for defense. 
He went against the English mob as one goes 
up against a castle that is locked, barred and 
213 



Henry Ward Beecher 

bristling with arms, and be gave sops to 
Cerberus, charmed the keys out of him who 
kept the fortress gate, cast a spell upon those 
who guarded the walls, stole all the weapons, 
and, single handed, at last lifted the banner 
of victory above the ramparts of granite. 
The history of eloquence holds no other 
achievement of the same rank and class. 
What a volume, that contains the speech 
delivered within the limit of nine days, with 
the introduction at Manchester, the three 
great arguments at Glasgow, Edinbm'gh and 
Liverpool, and the peroration in Exeter Hall, 
London ! What physical reserves as the ba^is 
of sustained public speech ! What mastery 
of all the facts of liberty and democracy, not 
less than slavery ! What familiarity with 
English law not less than American ! The 
orator moves across the scene in history like 
some refulgent planet in the sky. The story 
of those nine wonderful days makes illus- 
trious forever the history of eloquence and 
patriotism. 

The winter of 1862 and '63, with its high- 
wrought excitements, brought Beecher the 
peril of a nervous breakdown. His exhaus- 
tion illustrates the fact that some men who 
stayed at home endured as much as others 
214 



The Appeal to England 

who went to the front. Generals and their 
inarching regiments often suffered much, but 
they were not alone in their fortitude and 
faith. Women who toiled on farm or in 
hospital, working men who laboured to sup- 
port the boys at the front, orators who went 
up and down the land inciting patriotism in 
the people, preachers who realized that the 
breakdown of conscience meant the break- 
down of the cause — these all were citizen 
soldiers who defended the Union and kept 
the faith. 

Among them all no man poured out his 
life more generously than Henry Ward 
Beecher. Since 1850, through the inten- 
sities of the Fugitive Slave Law, the Fremont 
campaign, the Kansas troubles, the Lincoln 
election, the era of secession and the first 
two years of the war, he had been preach- 
ing, writing, lecturing, making public ad- 
dresses, attending to his great pastorate, and 
active in every civic and national interest. 
And during the war, back and forth, across 
the land, from city to city, in church, hall and 
armoury, he lifted up his voice in the presence 
of multitudes, telling the story of the founding 
of the Republic, showing that the Republic, 
with its self-government, was the last, best 
215 



Henry Ward Beecher 

hope of man, remindiug boys that they must 
fight and live for the Union that their 
fathers had died to found. When at length 
Antietam was won, and Lincoln issued the 
Emancipation Proclamation, and the rebelUon 
staggered hke a giant stunned by a crushing 
blow, Beecher was lifted into the seventh 
heaven of hope, and had the vision of coming 
victory. In that hour he told his people 
that he was ready to die, that God might 
peel him, and strip away all the leaves of life, 
and do with him as He pleased ; that he had 
lived fifty years, that he had had a good 
time, that he had " hit the devil many blows 
and square in the face , that it was joy enough 
to have uttered some words because they 
were incorporated into the lives of men 
and could not die." 

But we all know that it is possible to 
stretch the strings of the mental harp too 
tightly. Excitement burns the nerve as an 
electric current consumes a wire. During 
those days Beecher wore a garment whose 
warp and woof was fiery enthusiasm, and 
fierce flaming patriotism. The human body 
is like a cask of precious liquor. One way 
to drain off the ti^easure is to knock out the 
bung-hole, and in a few minutes drain the 
216 



The Appeal to England 

rich fountain dry ; another way is to bore 
innumerable apertures, that drop by drop 
the liquor may waste. And so it was with 
Beecher, during those exciting days, with 
this difference, that sometimes it seemed as 
if one great event would drain out all his 
life in a tumultuous flood, while at the same 
time innumerable petitioners taxed his life, 
drawing away his strength, drop by drop. 
Alarmed, the officers and friends in Plym- 
outh Church insisted upon rest and vaca- 
tion. They determined to put the sea 
between the preacher and his task, planning 
to lose him for a little time that they might 
have him for a long time. 

The popular opinion is that Beecher went 
to England, not openly, but secretly as a 
messenger of the government. Like other 
myths, the fable grew slowly, but is now 
well entrenched in the minds of multitudes. 
There is no foundation for the story. In- 
deed, Mr. Beecher is on record plainly, 
stating that no request, no suggestion, no 
hint, even, came from Washington. At the 
time, his relations with the Cabinet were 
strained. Seward was unfriendly. Stanton 
was hurt by his insistence, through the In- 
dejyendent, upon immediate emancipation. 
217 



Henry Ward Beecher 

For a time even Lincoln classed him with 
Horace Greeley, as extremist. His editorials 
during the spring of 1862 had one thought, 
" Carthago delenda est." It was only after 
Lincoln came around by a gunboat into Kew 
York Harbour, and secretly met General 
Winfield Scott in a friend's house, and had 
another secret interview with Henry T^^ard 
Beecher, and returned (letters exist from 
Secretary Hay, following an interview with 
him over the records in AYashington, which 
establish this trip to New York to see 
Scott and Beecher), that Beecher changed 
the tone of his editorials, and went over to 
Lincoln's position, — that the I^nion was first, 
and the destruction of slavery the secondary 
thing. The Great Emancipator loved and 
trusted Beecher, but the Cabinet was critical, 
and Lincoln, as he said, " did not have much 
influence with the administration." 

The only power and the whole power 
behind Beecher was that of Plymouth 
Church, that gave him the money for all 
of his expenses, and took from him a pledge 
that if he spoke at all he was to speak at 
their expense, but under no circumstances 
to either preach or lecture until he had re- 
covered his strength. He was ill during the 
218 



I'he Appeal to England 

entire voyage, and was not able to appear 
on deck until the vessel entered the Mersey. 
The news of Beecher's coming had preceded 
him, and on opening the papers he found even 
church leaders antagonistic. They deplored 
his coming, lest he increase the excitement. 
The nobility was in favour of the South, as 
were the ship-builders, the mill-owners, the 
bankers and all who had investments or loans 
in the cotton industry of England and of the 
South. 

One hundred and fifty Congregational 
ministers greeted Beecher with a breakfast 
in London. They asked him to preach 
and speak on religious topics, but to avoid 
all reference to slavery on account of the 
inflamed condition of the English mind. 
The man who introduced him deplored the 
war, and described the patience of God in 
permitting the North to go on. "When 
Beecher arose to speak he was in a towering 
rage. He told them that he would neither 
preach nor lecture nor speak in a mother land 
that was openly hostile to her own daughter, 
and unfriendly to every principle of liberty 
that was dear to England and embedded in 
English tradition and history. 

In substance, he said : " Your conscience 
219 



Henry Ward Bcecher 

here in England is very sensitive on the 
subject of war, providing some one else is 
fighting the war, but England has no con- 
science at all as to war when she is prose- 
cuting the campaign." At that very hour 
England was fighting a war in Japan, and 
a war in China, and a war in Xew Zealand 
for territory. Three wars being quite proper, 
if England fought them, but oh, the patience 
of God in permitting the North to exist 
even for one moment, while fighting for 
liberty, the Union and the emancipation of 
slaves ! He told them that they thought 
it was a crime for the North to have a war 
for emancipation, but quite proper for 
England to thi^eaten a war over two men 
named Mason and Slidell ! Beecher under- 
stood Old England. Xo nation in history 
ever conducted so many wars. Xo other 
nation's statesmen ever had such skill to in- 
vent moral excuses for seizing territor}^, in 
Africa, Eg3^pt, India, Thibet. Australia, New 
Zealand and all the islands of the sea. 
He best described it in his final speech in 
London, when returned from the Continent : 
" On what shore has not the prow of your 
ships dashed ? What land is there with a 
name and a people where your banner has 
220 



The Appeal to England 

not led your soldiers ? And when the great 
reveille shall sound, it will muster British 
soldiers from every clime and people un- 
der the whole heaven." What ? '' Speak 
in England on religion and keep still on 
slavery, and the JS'orth and the South?" 
When an engine is full of steam, it is a bad 
thing to sit on its safety-valve. Figuratively 
speaking, the chairman and the hundred 
and fifty ministers, who were trying to get 
Beecher to speak on religion and keep still 
on slavery, sat passively and serenely on 
the safety-valve for about five minutes, but 
finally the engine blew up. Mr. Beecher 
w^as not the man to stifle his convictions in 
the name of peace, for he knew that in an 
evil world a good man has no right to dwell 
at peace with the devil and his minions. So 
he declared his hostiUty, turned his back on 
England, and went to the Continent; and 
thus ended the first chapter in the European 
trip. 

Looking backward, it is easy to discover the 
explanation of England's attitude towards 
slavery and the Southern leaders. During 
the early forties England had herself passed 
through an industrial revolution. Because 
she had little agricultural land, and thirty 

221 



Henry Ward Beecher 

millions of people, the cost of living was 
high. When the cry of the people for bread 
became bitter, Cobden, Bright and their as- 
sociates inaugurated and carried through the 
Free Corn Movement. With the incoming 
of free raw materials England became the 
great manufacturing centre. What her 
farmers lost through free trade in selling 
grain they gained in the lowered price on 
which they bought. Within ten years after 
the victory of free trade England became a 
hive of industry, filled with clustering cities, 
while the whole land resounded with the 
stroke of engines. Abundance succeeded to 
poverty and work trod closely upon the heels 
of want. So prosperous had England be- 
come that by 1860 she was importing two 
million bales of cotton from Southern States. 
The shipyards of Glasgow built ships to 
carry cotton, the bankers in London made 
loans to Southern planters, the mill-owners 
in Manchester bought shares in the Southern 
cotton fields. The rich men of the South 
were constant guests of the mill-owners in 
Central England and of the bankers in Lon- 
don. Little b}'- little England was drawn in 
through financial channels, and cast her lot in 
with the production of cotton, — and slavery. 

222 



The Appeal to England 

Then came the Civil War. The planters 
went to the front with Lee's army ; the slaves 
freed from overseers would not work. The 
production of cotton was halved. The 
Northern navy blockaded the exit of cotton 
ships from the Southern ports. English 
ships hung around the Southern shores try- 
ing in vain to find access, hoping to run the 
gauntlet and obtain a cargo of cotton. One 
by one the great English mills shut down for 
want of raw material, and when two winters 
had passed, and the autumn of 1863 had 
come, and the English working people fronted 
a third winter, the spectacle became pathetic 
and terrible. Gaunt Famine stalked the land. 
The skeleton Want stood in the shadow of 
the poor man's house. But the courage and 
fidelity of the English cotton spinners held 
out for two years. The poor always love the 
poor. The classes have always been wrong, 
the masses have always been right. Luxury 
puts wax into the ears of the aristocrats, but 
want makes the hearing of the poor very 
sensitive to a sob of pain. The sympathy of 
the cotton spinner was with the Xorthern 
working man. An English working man 
did not Avant to be put in the same class with 
a Southern slave. He saw that any law that 
223 



Henry Ward Beecher 

riveted fetters on black slaves in the South 
helped forge a manacle for the cotton 
spinner's w^rist in the mother land. These 
poor English folk believed in the dignity of 
labour, in the right to a good wage, and in 
the necessity for all working people standing 
together. 

But the mill-owner wanted raw cotton. 
The banker wanted the mill-owner to have his 
cotton that his loans might be paid. The 
ship-builders wanted Southern cotton that 
their industry might thrive. Investors who 
for two years had had no interest on their 
Southern loans sympathized with the South ; 
the politicians, controlled by their financial 
interests, wanted the South to succeed. In 
that hour of temptation Avarice drew near 
and choked Justice. Greed offered bribes to 
Conscience. Old England's ruling classes, 
with the full sympathy of men like Glad- 
stone and hundreds of others, favoured the 
speedy recognition of the Southern Con- 
federacy in the hope that that would end the 
war and restore England's prosperity. 

In a word, the situation was this: The 
North had to fight the South, and Eng- 
land with her influence as well. For here 
was the North, struggling for the principles 
224 



The Appeal to England 

of the Pilgrim Fathers, for liberty, for de- 
mocracy and for the slaves, and just in the ' 
darkest hour of the struggle, when she was 
burying her dead and the whole Xorth was 
hung with funeral crape, England, with ships 
on every sea, England, strong and powerful, 
taking advantage of the capture of two 
Southern emissaries — Mason and Slidell— 
from the British ship Trent on the high seas, 
declared she would send an army to Canada 
and ships to batter down our Northern cities. 
Even Gladstone bought Southern bonds, but 
later Gladstone deeply lamented his sympa- 
thy with slavery and the South, and asked 
the world to forgive and forget it. Yet if 
the North has long ago forgiven England, it 
must be a hard thing for England to forgive 
herself that she gave to slavery every ounce 
of influence she had, her threats, her frowns, 
her diplomacy and her ships. Long after- 
wards a court of arbitration in Geneva pun- 
ished England with an enormous fine for the 
American shipping that she helped destroy in 
her effort to help break down the Xorth and 
defeat liberty in a war that her own states- 
man, John Bright, has characterized as one 
of the few wars not only justifiable but glo- 
rious in all history. 

225 



Henry Ward Beecher 

Now this was the attitude of England. 
Her upper classes and financial interests 
were all on the side of slavery and the 
South. Her great middle class were largely 
in favour of liberty. Her working people 
were naturally on the side of free labour and 
the North, but they Avere weakened by 
starvation till their endurance and fortitude 
were almost gone. And then it was that 
Beecher entered the scene, returning from 
the Continent to England. Eecognition of 
the Confederacy and other unfriendly ofii- 
cial acts were trembling in the balance ; 
yet there was hesitation, on account of the 
common people, who sympathized with the 
North. In telling of this afterwards, Mr. 
Beecher said : " To my amazement I found 
that the unvoting English possessed great 
power in England ; a great deal more power, 
in fact, than if they had a vote. The aristoc- 
racy and the government felt, 'These men 
know they have no political privileges, and we. 
must administer with the strictest regard to 
their feelings or there will be a revolution.' " 
There were many noble exceptions among 
the higher classes, and the Queen, doubtless 
under the influence of the Prince Consort 
Albert, who died in 1861, and had been a 
226 



The Appeal to England 

firm friend of America, was also friendly to 
the North ; but her Government was not. 

The argmnent finally used to persuade 
Beecher to speak was that the English Anti- 
Slavery Society was already discredited, un- 
popular, and frowned upon by the nobility 
and the upper classes, and that if Beecher 
would not recognize them by at least one 
speech their cause and ours would be still 
further weakened. 

He began his work with a speech at Man- 
chester, the very centre of the cotton spin- 
ning industry. For weeks the streets had 
been placarded against him. On his way to 
the Free Trade Hall he found, not a multi- 
tude, but a mob, filling the streets. The 
meeting had been packed in advance. 
"Within five minutes after his introduction 
the storm let loose its fury. There were 
two or three centres of conflict that became 
veritable whirlpools of excitement. All the 
rest of the audience climbed on their chairs 
to see what was going on in the tumultuous 
centres. Everybody seemed to be yelling, 
some for order, and others with the purpose 
of breaking up the meeting. Mr. Beecher 
saw that many were determined that he 
should not speak, and he realized that if they 
227 



Henry Ward Beecher 

broke him down, other cities would with- 
draw theii^ invitation, and it would appear 
that all England was unalterably opposed to 
the North, so that the recognition of the 
Confederacy might follow. When his ene- 
mies began to wear themselves out and the 
tumult to subside, Mr. Beecher shot a few 
sentences into the noise. " I have registered 
a vow that I will not leave your country 
until I have spoken in your great cities. I 
am going to be heard, and my country shall 
be vindicated." 

The orator soon found that about one- 
quarter of the audience were bitterly hostile. 
Another quarter applauded his sentiment. 
The great mass was hesitant, undecided, 
unconvinced, and he determined to con- 
quer that undecided class, and add them to 
that portion that was friendly. He scorn- 
fully reminded them that he had before met 
men whose cause could not bear the light 
of free speech. He roused them by saying 
that American institutions were the fruit of 
English ideas, and that the fruit of American 
liberty was from seed corn that was English. 

When some one shouted that he was harsh 
and unfair, he answered. What if some 
exquisite dancing master should stand on 
228 



The Appeal to England 

the edge of a battle-field where a hero lifted 
his battle-axe, and criticize him by saying 
that ** his gestures and postures violated the 
proprieties of polite life ! " He added, " When 
dandies fight they think how they look; 
when men fight, they think only of deeds." 
He said that what the North desired was 
not material aid, but simply that England 
should keep hands off, and that France 
should keep hands off. He affirmed that 
even if they both interfered, the North would 
fight on, that slavery must be destroyed, 
and that liberty must be established on the 
American continent ; that the victory of 
democracy and liberty in the North would 
mean their victory over the North and South 
American continent, and that if the day ever 
should come when the old flag should wave 
again over every state in the South, and the 
atrocious crime of slavery should be destroyed, 
there should be liberty for the press, and 
liberty for the poor in the schoolhouse ; if 
plantations should be broken up and dis- 
tributed among the poor farmers, and the 
privileges of civil liberty be won, that it would 
be worth all the blood and tears and woe. 

When he said that Great Britain had 
frowned upon the North, but hastened to 
229 



Henry Ward Beecher 

fling her arms around the neck of the im- 
perious South, one Englishman waved his 
arms and shouted : " She doesn't I " and the 
six thousand people began to cheer the dis- 
claimer of England's being Eomeo. To 
which Beecher answered : "I have only to 
say that she has been caught in very suspi- 
cious circumstances." 

Beecher's unshakable good humour, his 
witty, lightning-like answers to their ques- 
tions and contradictions, his solid sense and 
— when he got the chance — his flaming 
eloquence, finally quelled and captured them. 
Then he traversed the entire history of slav- 
ery in its relation to the Colonies, the States, 
and the different forms of legislation up to 
the Kansas and Nebraska Bill. When he 
concluded his speech, and the sentiment of 
the audience was called for, to the astonish- 
ment of his friends, men lifted up their 
voices with a sound like the sound of many 
waters, and lined up for the Xorth and 
liberty. The enthusiasm was overwhelming. 
Within three hours January's frost had 
turned to the bloom of June, and the mo- 
ment was radiant with hope. The London 
Times contained four columns of this speech, 
and the address became the topic of the hour 
230 



The Appeal to England 

in every club in England. And either of 
these facts in those days meant that Henry 
Ward Beecher was famous in England. 

His speeches in Glasgow and Edinburgh 
took up the second and third steps in the 
development of slavery and liberty on the 
American continent. He told these ship- 
builders in Glasgow how the providence of 
God seemed to be exhibiting to all the peo- 
ples of the world the reflex influence of 
slavery upon the strongest people and the 
richest resources, and how slavery cursed 
whatever it touched. That the lesson might 
be the clearer He gave liberty an unfriendly 
clime, and gave slavery a rich arena. To 
the JS'orth He gave short summers, bleak 
skies, the rocks of JSTew England hills, the 
thin soil of New York, the sand dunes of 
Michigan. To the South He gave sunny 
Virginia, the riches of the Gulf States, the 
fruitful skies, the abundant rains, the 
treasures of the cotton, the sugar and the 
rice. Above all, God sifted all the nations 
of the Old World to find blood rich enough 
to people the Southern States. The men 
who laid the foundations of the great South 
were people of a heroic type, giants and 
heroes of fortitude. God brought the 

211 



Henry Ward Beecher 

Huguenots, and the very flower of French 
chivalry into Florida and G eorgia. He sifted 
all Scotland and Xorth Ireland for outstand- 
ing men for South Carolina. He took the 
best blood of England for Virginia. These 
Southern founders and fathers had fought in 
France, endured for their convictions in 
Scotland, conquered their enemies in Eng- 
land and Xorth Ireland, and God rewarded 
them with the richest, choicest meadows and 
valleys of the sunny South. And yet Sla- 
very wrought weakness, while Liberty made 
the bleak North to blossom like the rose. 

It is said that plants exude poison from the 
roots, and soon destroy the soil unless there 
is a rotation of crops. Slavery ^vas a 
noxious plant, deadlier than the nightshade, 
and it poisoned the South. The longer 
slavery existed, the weaker the Southern 
giant became, until, toiling on, the South 
became bankrupt through slavery, and toil- 
ing on, every year of the war under free 
labour found the North growing ever richer 
and stronger. Liberty is a giant that when 
it touches the soil renews its strength. 

Oh, if the South had but had a better 
cause ! History affords nothing fmer than 
the bravery of Southern soldiers and their 
232 



The Appeal to England 

leaders ; had they been fighting for liberty, 
or some great cause that would have sup- 
ported them during the struggle instead 
of bankrupting them as slavery did, it is 
doubtful whether any army could have de- 
feated their soldiers. 

In Liverpool Beecher literally fought with 
the lions of Ephesus. The bill- boards were 
posted with placards in red type. All men 
in England who had investments in the 
South and wanted to break Beecher and his 
cause seemed to have assembled. From the 
moment be entered the room the great audi- 
ence became a mob, and with groans, hisses, 
cat-calls, epithets, men interrupted the orator 
with cheers for the South. Speaking was 
like lifting up one's voice in the midst of 
a hurricane, or trying to speak while a 
typhoon was raging on the sea. For one 
hour the tumult raged. From time to time 
the police would succeed in carrying out 
some obstreperous individual but there were 
enough men scattered through the hall, each 
bellowing like a bull of Bashan, to make 
hearing impossible. To add to the tumult, 
from time to time, an Englishman would 
climb on his chair and shout, " I am ashamed 
of Liverpool and my country," and the con- 
233 



Henry Ward Beecher 

fusion would break out afresh. It took one 
hour to wear the voices out. When Beecher 
told the reporters that he would speak slowly 
so they could hear, and thus he could reach 
all England, the audience grew quieter. 

Beecher urged three arguments, — first, that 
tho national prosperity is dependent upon the 
production of wealth, and this meant inde- 
pendence for the producer ; second, that pros- 
perity depends upon manufacturing and that 
means a high quality of educated workman ; 
third, that prosperity is dependent upon com- 
merce and the exchange of commodities be- 
tween nations, and that means brotherhood. 
He urged that the more intelligent and pros- 
perous the workman, the higher his wage, and, 
therefore, the better he supports as a buyer. A 
slave uses his feet and hands, and produces a 
few cents a day. A poor white labourer uses 
his hands and his lower head, and earns fifty 
cents a day. An intelligent Xorthern work- 
ing man uses his hands and his creative in- 
tellect, and he produces a dollar a day. A 
highly educated worker becomes an inventor 
as well as a freeman, and earns five dollars a 
day. With this wage he buys comforts, 
tools, products of the loom, builds up manu- 
factures, and promotes prosperity. For that 
234 



The Appeal to England 

reason a few patricians only in the South buy 
in the English market, while the millions of 
slaves demand from Sheffield only whips and 
manacles. Therefore slavery starves English 
trade. — And at last Liverpool heard him. 

In Exeter Hall in London, Beecher closed 
his argument : " Shall we let the South go, 
and carry slavery with her ? If a Northern 
working man has a mad dog by the throat 
shall he let that anunal go to spread death ? 
Letting the South go as a free nation is one 
thing, but letting her go to spread slavery 
over Mexico and Central America is another 
thing. When we kill the mad dog we will 
talk about letting the South go." 

Beecher returned home to find himself the 
hero of the hour. In Plymouth Church, on 
Sunday morning, the audience stood for five 
minutes, and with their tears and silence told 
him of their gratitude and love. From that 
hour Stanton asked for his friendship, and 
was weekly and even daily in correspond- 
ence. He promised Beecher that imme- 
diately upon the receipt of an}^ news from 
the battle-field he would send him a tele- 
gram. Indeed, the first news that the coun- 
try had from Stanton of one of the great 
victories came to Beecher's pulpit and was 
235 



Henry Ward Beechcr 

read over his desk. Other great men, the 
President, secretaries, the generals, the states- 
men, editors, lecturers, preachers, did their 
part, but high among co-workers ranks 
Henry Ward Beecher. God gave him a 
great task, and armed him for the battle. 
He loved the poor, he broke the shackles 
from the slave, he discovered to the world 
the love of God, and dying he flung his 
helmet into the thick of the enemy. It is 
for us and our children to fight our way 
forward to that helmet, and fling our own at 
last into some new fight for the emancipa- 
tion of the mind and heart of earth's troubled 
millions. 

It must be confessed that the aristocracy 
of England and her upper middle class, in 
the main, still sympathized with the South, 
while the English cabinet tried to maintain 
neutrality. Four-fifths of the House of Lords 
were "no well-wishers of anything Amer- 
ican, and most of the House of Commons 
voted in sympathy with the South." 

But the attitude of the " classes " of Eng- 
land was only the reflection of her scholars. 
Carlyle, whose early books had no sale in 
England, and who wrote Emerson that he 
had received his first money to keep him 
236 



The Appeal to England 

from starvation from Boston and New York, 
" when not a penny had been realized in 
England," had no sympathy with liberty and 
the I^orth. As soon as his own physical 
wants were supplied by the American check 
which Emerson sent him, Carlyle began to 
call the war "a smoky chimney that had 
taken fire." "]^o war ever waged in my 
time was to me more profoundly foolish 
looking." (Slovenly English, contradictory 
thinking, and poor morals !) " Neutral I am 
to a degree." Then Carlyle tried to sum up 
his view of the situation : " Now speaks the 
Northern Peter to the Southern Paul : ' Paul, 
you unaccountable scoundrel ! I find you 
hire yom^ servants for life, not by the month 
or year as I do. You are going straight to 
hell.' Paul : ' Good words, Peter ; the risk 
is my own. Hire you your servants by the 
month or day, and go straight to heaven. 
Leave me to my own method.' Peter : ^ No, 
I won't. T will beat your brains out.' And 
he's trying dreadfully ever since, but cannot 
quite manage it." 

No one knew better than Carlyle that there 
is a world diameter between the South hir- 
ing a man for life, and by force holding him 
in slavery. But Carlyle for three years 



Henry Ward Beecher 

poured out such vapid humbug, cant and 
hypocrisy as this, and never once was sound 
in his thinliing or fair in his view-point 
during the entire war. 

Even Charles Dickens, who had written 
denouncing slavery in his " American Xotes," 
returned to England in the spring of 1S63 to 
predict the overwhelming victory of the 
South, and to characterize the hopes of Lin- 
coln as " a harmless hallucination." But lit- 
tle by little, English sentiment began to 
change. Goldwin Smith, of Oxford Univer- 
sity, consented to speak at a meeting in 
Manchester to protest against the building 
and sending out of piratical ships in support 
of the Southern Confederacy. He affirmed 
boldly that "no nation ever inflicted upon 
another more flagrant or more maddening 
wrong [in permitting the Alahama to escape]. 
No nation with English blood in its veins 
had ever borne such a wrong without resent- 
ment. 

Eichard Cobden wrote to Mr. Beecher as 
to the feeling in England : " In every other 
instance . . . the popular sympathy of this 
country has always leaped to the side of the 
insurgents the moment a rebellion has broken 
out. In the present case, our masses have 
238 



The Appeal to England 

an instinctive feeling that their cause is 
bound up in the prosperity of the United 
States. It is true that they have not much 
power in the direct form of a vote ; but when 
the millions of this country are led by the 
religious middle class the}^ can together pre- 
vent the government fi^om pursuing a policy 
hostile to their sympathies." 

When Beecher appeared and spoke, he 
aroused, intensified, unified, and made ef- 
fective this great underlying force of English 
popular feeling, and the unfriendly purposes 
of the governmental and " upper-class " ele- 
ment were paralyzed. 

Beecher himself was very modest about 
his achievement. Said he: "When in Oc- 
tober you go to a tree and give it a jar, and 
the fruit rains down all about you, it is not 
you that ripened and sent do\\Ti the fruit j 
the whole summer has been doing that. It 
was my good fortune to be there when it 
was needed that some one should jar the 
tree ; the fruit was not of my ripening." 

Beecher returned home in Kovember of 
1863, conscious that he had risked everything 
in the service of his imperilled country. lie 
found the entire North had constituted itself 
a Committee of Keception to welcome him 
239 



Henry Ward Beecher 

home. A great public meeting was arranged 
in the Academy of Music in Kew York, and 
the Music Hall was crowded from pit to dome 
with the leaders of the city and of the Korth. 
Mr. Beecher entered the room at eight o'clock, 
and the whole audience rose to its feet to 
greet him, but not until many minutes had 
passed in tumultuous cheering did he have 
an opportunity to speak. From that hour 
his influence in the country was second only 
to that of the President, two or three mem- 
bers of his cabinet, and General Grant. 
Abraham Lincoln wrote to Mr. Beecher 
words of warmest gratitude and invited him 
to the White House. " Often and often," 
wrote Secretary Stanton, " in the dark hours 
you have come to me, and I have longed to 
hear your voice, feeling that above all other 
men you could cheer, strengthen, quiet and 
uplift me in this great battle, where by 
God's providence it has fallen upon me to 
hold a part, and perform a duty beyond my 
own strength." AVhen therefore Lee sur- 
rendered, and the war came to a close. Pres- 
ident Lincoln and the cabinet felt that Beech- 
er's service to the cause of libert}^ had earned 
for him the most unique distinction granted 
to any man during the war. And so it 
240 



The Appeal to England 

came about that four years after Beauregard 
fired upon Fort Sumter, and the flag of the 
Union was lowered to give place to the flag 
of Secession, that not a general nor an ad- 
miral, but that a minister, Henry Ward 
Beecher, was selected to lift into its place 
again the old flag, that proclaimed to all the 
nations of the earth that government of the 
people, by the people and for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth. 



241 



HEEOES OF BATTLE : 
AMEKICAiS' SOLDIERS AND SAILOES 

ONE of the wariest and most capable of 
the Confederate commanders was Gen- 
eral Joseph E. Johnston. In his report of 
the battle of Kenesaw Mountain in North- 
western Georgia, in June, 1864, when Sher- 
man had at last driven him to bay, he thus 
describes the attack and the repulse : *' The 
Federal troops pressed forward with the reso- 
lution always displayed by the American 
soldier when properly led. After maintain- 
ing the contest for three-quarters of an hour, 
they retired unsuccessful, because they had 
encountered entrenched infantry, unsurpassed 
by that of Napoleon's Old Guard, or that 
which followed Wellington into France, out 
of Spain." 

It would be difficult to find a more soldierly 
appreciation of both officers and men of those 
two American armies. And in a recent in- 
teresting book on Grant and Lee ' is cited a 

' " On the Trail of Grant and Lee," by Frederic 
Trevor Hill : New York and London, D. Appleton & Co. 
242 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

remark of Charles Francis Adams when 
American Minister to Great Britain in the 
early years of our Civil War. Some one 
sarcastically asked him his opinion of the 
Confederate victories of that time. He 
quietly replied, " I tliink they have been won 
by my countrymen." In all those four 
strenuous years, heroic qualities — enterprise, 
resolution, valour, self-control, exercise of 
judgment amid dangers, endurance and fidel- 
ity in disaster — were plentifully developed 
throughout both parties of the then divided 
American people. The lonely picket-duty, 
the toilsome march, the endless duties of the 
soldier, were a constant drain upon enduring 
faithfulness, harder to bear, often, than the 
crashing excitement of the battle, while the 
deadly suffering of camp and hospital were at 
times easily worse than all. 

Most fascinating the story of the leaders 
of the two armies. The career of two pre- 
eminent military leaders of the South, Lee 
and Jackson, has already been reviewed — 
cursorily, as must be the case in all the ref- 
erences to example — and we ha^'e noted them 
especially as to character. But it should be 
said further that in the opinion of military 
critics and soldiers, both American and for- 
243 



Heroes of Battle 

eign, Eobert E. Lee was one of the most 
masterly strategists in warlike annals. In 
his defense of Pdchmond as the vital point of 
the Confederacy he did have the advantage 
of operating on interior lines ; but when that 
is said all is said, for in numbers of men, 
equipment and military resources, he was al- 
ways more meagrely supplied than his Federal 
opponents. His available means were mostly 
in his fertile brain, his prompt judgment, and 
his dauntless heart, together with the spirited 
support of his officers and the indomitable 
marching and fighting energy of his soldiers. 
The intense and tireless Jackson was indeed 
the chief's " right arm," and more than that, 
a keen intelligence, instant to see and seize 
the right way, and to follow it so swiftly 
that his rarely defeated infantry earned the 
proud nickname of " foot-cavalry." 

Out of the many gallant officers of the 
Southern armies were some others whose 
names became familiar throughout the Xorth. 
Among them were : Generals Pierre G. T. 
Beauregard, prominent in service from Bull 
Run to the end ; the brilliant Albert Sidney 
Johnston, killed at Pittsburg Landing in 
1862 ; J. E. B. Stuart, renowned as a fear- 
less cavalry officer ; James Longstreet, a 
244 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

leader of great distinction ; the two Hills- 
Daniel H. and Ambrose P., both renowned 
fighters, the latter immortalized by Stone- 
wall Jackson's last words, " A. P. Hill, pre- 
pare for action ! " Another was Richard S. 
Ewell — not, like all the foregoing, a West 
Point graduate, with training and notable 
service in United States armies and wars, 
but, like many Federal generals, a volunteer, 
who achieved high rank by efficient activity. 
In naval affairs, naturally, the South had lit- 
tle chance to show her mettle, having neither 
navy -yards nor navy, and all her ports being 
blockaded. The chief attempts on the water 
were the iron-plated ram Merrimac^ com- 
manded by Commodore Franklin Buchanan, 
which after sinking several wooden men- 
of-war in Hampton Eoads was defeated by 
the new iron-turreted Monitor under Lieu- 
tenant (later Admiral) John L. Worden ; the 
iron-clad ram Albemarle^ which damaged 
Northern shipping until blown up by Lieu- 
tenant "W. B. Gushing, U. S. Navy, in a dar- 
ing personal adventure ; and the British 
built, equipped and manned Alabama, under 
Commodore Raphael Semmes of the Con- 
federacy, which destroyed millions of dollars 
in Northern ships on the high seas in 1862- 
245 



Heroes of Battle 

1864, until sunk by the war-steamer Kear~ 
sarge under Captain (later Admiral) John A. 
Winslow, off Cherbourg, in June, 1864. 

The principal naval activities of the Fed- 
erals during the war were in» the reduction of 
fortified places on land in cooperation with 
the armies, and in blockading ports of the 
South to keep in their cotton and to keep out 
foreign supplies. One of the earliest feats 
was the effective use by Captain Andrew H. 
Foote in February, 1862, of the gunboats 
built in 1861 by Fremont for river warfare, 
when Foote daringly shelled Forts Donelson 
and Henry on the Cumberland Eiver, ena- 
bling Grant to attack and summon them to 
" unconditional surrender." And on the 
long seaboard, the North soon had a line of 
battle-ships stretching from Cape Hatteras 
around to Florida, Xew Orleans and the 
further coast of Texas. Besides its few orig- 
inal war-ships, out of coasters, steamers and 
old junk the Navy Department constructed 
a fleet. But it was the man behind the gun 
who maintained the blockade, starved the 
Confederacy, and cleared the Mississippi 
Eiver. 

The story of men hke Farragut and his 
boys is like a chapter out of a wonder book. 
246 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

In April, 1862, with a fleet of wooden frigates, 
mortar-schooners, and half-protected boats he 
entered the mouth of the Mississippi below 
'New Orleans. The bottom of the river 
bristled with torpedoes — kegs filled with 
powder, and surrounded with long prongs 
that rested upon percussion caps. When a 
ship struck a prong it exploded the cap and 
the powder, and again and again a boat went 
to the bottom. The forts that protected the 
Mississippi thirty miles below the city were 
sheathed with sand bags, and mounted a 
hundred guns ; while a boom of logs and 
chains crossed the river, and a fleet of fifteen 
vessels including an armed ram and a float- 
ing battery were there to dispute further 
progress. But Farragut lashed himself into 
the rigging of his flag-ship, and his fleet 
stormed the passage, raked with chains and 
shell. From the 18th to the 25th of April, 
a battle royal was waged with splendid valour 
on both sides ; but the forts were passed, the 
boom was broken, the defensive fleet de- 
feated, and Farragut had won ISTew Orleans. 
Farragut, David D. Porter and other heroes 
had their full share of war and of glory not 
only here but later in Mobile Bay, and in 
1863 with Grant and Sherman at Yicksburg, 
247 



Heroes of Battle 

and at Port Hudson on the Mississippi, and 
Porter at Fort Fisher in December, 1864- 
January, 1865. Of absolute maritime Avar- 
fare there was none, except Winslow's sink- 
ing of the Alaha?7ia, but in all the river and 
harbour fighting, against both fleets and 
forts, there was endless demand for intrepid- 
ity, ingenuity, large intelligence, and heroism 
— demands never failing of response. 

The greatest soldiers of the North were 
McClellan, Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan, 
and, towering above all, Grant. We may 
not linger in detail upon them all, and can 
but mention George H. Thomas, the "Kock of 
Chickamauga," stern as war, firm as granite, 
the bravest of knights ; William T. Sherman, 
audacious, fertile, perhaps the most brilliant 
of them all ; and Philip H. Sheridan, an 
organized thunder-storm, with the swiftness 
of the war eagle, impetuous, loving ad- 
venture, the idol of his men. 

If at last Grant was the brain of the army, 
Sherman was, like Jackson to Lee, its " right 
arm." From the beginning of his military 
career, Sherman won the admiration and 
confidence of the government and the people 
of the Xorth. He achieved honours at Yicks- 
burg, and from that hour on to his victory at 
248 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

Atlanta and his march to the sea, his name 
and fame steadily increased. His victories 
were won, not only by enthusiasm and bril- 
liancy, but by a mastery in advance of all 
the facts in the case. His knowledge was 
microscopic, to the last degree, as to the 
roads, bridges, and resources of the country 
through which he was marching. On ap- 
proaching Atlanta he came to a region 
through which he had ridden on horseback 
twenty years before. That night in his tent, 
his guides, spies and advance scouts spread 
out their maps before Sherman, and to the 
astonishment of all, the soldier corrected and 
amplified them. It seemed that a score of 
years before he had formed the habit of mak- 
ing a detailed study of each region through 
which he travelled, and of working out cam- 
paigns of attack and defense. His old notes 
were so accurate as to prove the basis of an 
actual campaign for a great army. His con- 
test with Johnston represented what has been 
called an inch by inch struggle, and although 
Sherman was victorious, when he passed 
away, the aged Southern soldier, Johnston, 
made the long journey to Xew York to act 
as pall-bearer and to testify to the splendid 
qualities of his great opponent. 
249 



Heroes of Battle 

It was Grant himself who called Sheridan 
" the left arm of the Union." By universal 
consent "little Phil" was the most brilliant 
campaigner of the group of soldiers of the 
first class. The story of his victory at 
Winchester captured the unagination of the 
North. The poem describing that achieve- 
ment became the most popular poem of the 
year, and was recited by all the schoolboys 
on Friday afternoons, and quoted by all the 
politicians on the platform. The Xorth had 
suffered so many defeats in the Shenandoah 
Yalley that Sheridan's victory put new heart 
into the Union forces, and helped unite the 
Eepublican party, making certain the elec- 
tion of Lincoln. 

Indeed, a great German soldier once ex- 
pressed the judgment that Sheridan ranked 
not only with Grant, but with the greatest 
soldiers of all time. 

The work of George H. McClellan was 
the work of the pioneer and pathfinder. 
It is one thing to take a sword, a Damascus 
blade, and use it in leadership, and quite 
another thing to take raw metal and on the 
anvil hammer out the blade for a hero's 
hand. McClellan made the sword ; Grant 
used it. There is a pathetic passage in 
250 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

Dante's " Yita Nuova " : " It is easier to 
sing a song than to create a harp." Dante 
meant that he had to create the Italian 
language before he could write the " Para- 
diso." Now McClellan's task was to create 
an army. He took a body of raw recruits 
and drilled them ; he organized a system of 
supplies and built up a purchasing, transport- 
ing and storing department ; he tested out 
all the guns, the cannons, powder and ex- 
plosives ; he compacted a body of engineers, 
weeding out poor ones and educating good 
ones ; he took officers who at the beginning 
had their appointments through political in- 
fluence and trained them until he had a 
body of men well knit together. 

But McClellan had to contend with jealousy 
and insubordination. He was a commander 
early in the war, and he had competitors and 
detractors. It was charged against him that 
he was more anxious to make than to use a 
splendid army, and possibly his ideals of 
efficiency were too high for those early days. 
Yet " Little Mac " was idolized by his sol- 
diers, with whom he fought and won bloody 
battles, and even the indeterminate ones are 
held in doubt as to his responsibility. Had 
Hooker obeyed his command, and crossed 
251 



Heroes of Battle 

the bridge at Antietam and occupied the 
heights bej^ond, soldiers think to-day that 
Lee would have been crushed. Another 
fact was against him. The Xorth was not 
ready to behold nor strong enough to en- 
dure the slaughter to which later on they 
became accustomed. After one of Mc- 
Clellan's first campaigns, Burnside wrote 
home that McClellan could have fought his 
way to Kichmond, but it would have cost 
ten thousand men, and that would have 
been butchery. Later on, Grant, in a single 
brief campaign, lost twenty-five thousand 
men ! But if Grant had suffered such losses 
in 1861 or 1862, he would have been dropped 
by Washington as imfitted for a military 
campaign. 

History will rank Grant as the foremost 
soldier of the Republic. His story is full of 
romance. He was of Scotch Covenanter 
stock that settled in New England, and 
made its way to Ohio and Illinois. Like all 
the most successful generals on both sides 
in our Civil War, he was a graduate of West 
Point, showed talent in mathematics and 
engineering, and made an honourable name 
in the Mexican War. Scott praised him for 
his work as quartermaster and officer. The 

2^2 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

two maps that Grant made by questioning 
ranchmen and farmers as he went through 
Texas, and the information he collected from 
men who had been in and knew the roads 
and resources of Mexico, were later on in- 
valuable. Grant was in every Mexican 
battle save one. 

Fort Sumter fell on April 14, 1861. On 
the 15th Lincoln called for 75,000 troops. 
On the 19th Grant organized a little company 
in Springfield, Illinois. Two days later 
Governor Yates made him colonel. On the 
31st of July he was in command at Mexico, 
Missouri. On the 7th of August his victory 
at Columbus won him the rank of brigadier- 
general. On the 10th of February, 1862, he 
was made major-general ; on the 23d of 
March, 1861:, he was made lieutenant-general 
of the armies of the United States. It was 
one long uninterrupted series of victories, for 
it has been said that it will never be known 
if Grant could conduct a retreat, because he 
never was defeated. From the beginning 
his supreme qualities as a military commander 
were fully evidenced. 

Columbus was called the Gibraltar of the 
Mississippi. HaUeck had ordered Grant to 
feel the strength of the enemy. But Grant 
253 



Heroes of Battle 

was resourceful, fertile in expedients, a be- 
liever in offensive tactics. Hurling his forces 
upon Columbus, he won a signal victory. 
At Fort Donelson, Grant showed his iron 
endurance and untiring patience. When it 
came to the critical hour of the assault, a cold 
sleet-storm fell upon his army ; the ground 
was a sheet of glass, the trees encased in ice. 
Grant himself spent half the night under a 
tree, standing upright, receiving reports and 
working out his plans. When a spy brought 
word that the Confederates had packed their 
knapsacks with three days' rations. Grant 
said ; " They are preparing to retreat ; we 
must assault the works," and, despite the 
storm, made an immediate attack. When 
Ilalleck received the news of the fall of Fort 
Donelson, in announcing the victory to Wash- 
ington he did not even mention the name of 
Grant, but asked Lincoln to promote Smith, 
a subordinate commander. 

Later, in 1863, after months of siege by 
river and by land, came the capture of Yicks- 
burg, coincident with the Battle of Gettys- 
burg, that was the higli-water mark of the 
war. The announcement of these two 
victories, on July 4, 18G3, intoxicated the 
I^orth with jo}^ 

254 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

By this time Grant's name was upon all 
lips, and he stood forth the one general fitted 
for command of all the armies — in the West, 
in the South, and on the Potomac. Just as 
some men have the gift of inventing, the gift 
of singing, the gift of carving, so Grant had 
the gift of strategy. One glance, and Grant 
had the whole situation in hand — the weak 
points to be attacked, the weak points of his 
own position to be safeguarded, the danger 
point for the enemy. Obedient himself, he 
expected instant obedience from others. 
Willing to risk his own life, he expected the 
same self-sacrifice on the part of his fellow 
ofiicers. One biographer calls him " a master 
quartermaster," telling us that he knew how 
to feed and supply an army. Another calls 
Grant a great drillmaster, exhibiting him as 
the teacher of his own generals. Another 
terms Grant a natural engineer, with great 
gifts, but without detailed training. Another 
speaks of him as the greatest soldier in history 
in the way of attack. But when all these 
statements are combined, they tell us that 
Grant is the great, all-roimd soldier of the 
war, who by natural gifts and long experience 
could do many things, and all equally well. 
It is this that explains the tributes to his 
255 



Heroes of Battle 

military genius by foreign soldiers, and the 
great masters of war in every land. 

Grant's last campaign was against the capi- 
tal of the Southern Confederacy, as the key to 
the Atlantic coast, for until Richmond should 
be taken and the Confederate government 
put to flight, the war would not be broken. 
Therefore Grant concentrated all his forces 
upon that : — " I will fight it out on this line 
if it takes all summer." In those awful 
campaigns Grant came to be called " the 
butcher," for he was as pitiless as fate, as un- 
yielding as death. One outpost after another 
fell; one Southern regiment after another 
surrendered. Battles became mere slaughter- 
pits. Men went down like forest leaves ; the 
army surgeons, at the spectacle, grew sick ; 
it seemed more like murder than war. The 
Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Chickahominy, 
Petersburg, were names to make one shudder. 
But Lee would not yield, and Grant had 
one watchword, " Unconditional surrender." 

At last, without food, without equipment, 
without arms. Southern soldiers began to 
desert by thousands. Lee's army was re- 
duced, his supplies were cut off, his retreat to 
the mountains and any chance of joining 
with Johnston from the Carolinas were 
256 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

blocked. Grant demanded surrender to save 
further bloodshed. 

On the morning of April 9, 1865, Grant 
and Lee met in peace conference. Grant had 
on an old suit splashed with mud, and was 
without his sword ; Lee wore a splendid 
new uniform that had just been sent by ad- 
mirers in Baltunore. Lee asked upon what 
terms Grant would receive the surrender. 
Grant answered that officers and men " Shall 
not hereafter serve in the armies of the Con- 
federate States or in any military capacity 
against the United States of America, or 
render aid to the enemies of the latter, until 
properly exchanged," — all being then freed 
on parole. The horses of the cavalry were 
the property of the men. And Grant said : 
" I know that men— and indeed the whole 
South — are impoverished ; I will instruct my 
officers to allow the men to retain their 
horses and take them home to work their 
little farms." Lee's final request was for 
rations for his starving men. Grant and 
Lee shook hands, after which the Virginian 
mounted his horse and rode off to his army. 
The Confederates met their beloved general 
with tumultuous shouts. '\\^ith eyes swim- 
ming in tears, Lee said, in substance : '^ I 
257 



Heroes of Battle 

have done what I thought to be best and what 
I thought was right ; go back to your homes, 
conduct yourselves like good citizens and you 
will not be molested." 

When certain Northern soldiers were pre- 
paring to fire salutes to celebrate the victory, 
Grant stopped the demonstration. " The 
best sign of rejoicing after victory will be to 
abstain from all demonstrations in the field." 
All men in the JSTorth felt that the fall of 
Lee's army meant the fall of the Confederacy. 
Indeed, it did practically end the war. The 
final sheaf of victory is reaped when the com- 
mander, at the head of his troops, marches 
into the enemy's capital and makes the 
palace of his foe to shelter his own horses. 
The whole South expected Grant to lead his 
Army of the Potomac into Eichmond. But 
Grant remembered Lee's sorrow, and had no 
desire for a dramatic triumph. He sent a 
subordinate to occupy Eichmond, and quietly 
began the work of disbanding the army. 
Sending his regiments back to the fields and 
factories, he said, '' Let us have peace." From 
that sentiment issued the new South and the 
new North. 

But the man who had fought the war 
through to a successful issue became the 
258 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

most beloved man in the North, and soon the 
people bore hhn to the White House. The 
task was one for a giant. Four million slaves, 
newly emancipated, had to be cared for. 
Their fidelity to the families of their absent 
masters during the war was beautiful ; while, 
towards the end of the strife, the enrollment 
and gallant fighting of 150,000 coloured men 
(Northern and Southern) in the Federal 
armies showed their manfulness. And now 
their Southern millions were free. They 
had the suffrage, but could not read the 
names of the men for whom they were 
voting. They were free men, but they 
had no land, no plough, no cabin, no any- 
thing. Pitiful their plight I In retrospect, 
no race has ever made such wonderful prog- 
ress in fifty years. With President Eliot 
we may say that "their industrial achieve- 
ments are the wonder of the world." 

The second task that confronted President 
Grant was the reconstruction of the South. 
It was the era of the carpet-bagger. North- 
ern reo'iments dwelt in Southern cities. Men 
were talking about hanging Jefferson Davis, 
and trying to decide whether or not the Con- 
federate soldiers and officers should receive 
again the suffrage. Designing whites and 
259 



Heroes of Battle 

ignorant coloured men gained control of 
legislatures. Corruption was rife. The whole 
South was prostrated. Ten thousand ques- 
tions arose in Congress, bewildering, intricate, 
and the whole land was divided in opinion 
as to the proper courses. Finally, all the 
Confederate officers, saving perhaps Jefferson 
Davis alone, and some who refused to accept, 
received again their political rights at the 
hands of the magnanimous North. Slowly 
chaos became cosmos. 

Scarcely less heavy were the financial 
troubles of Grant's administration. An era 
of war is an era of extravagance. When 
hard times came, men were tempted by the 
dreams of cheap money, and the greenback 
craze was abroad. But Grant stood for 
honest money, and attacked lying measures 
with the zeal of a Hebrew prophet. 

After two presidential terms came two 
years of foreign travel (1877-79), and 
wherever the great soldier went he exhibited 
his confidence in democracy, his interest in 
the working people and the poor. He re- 
turned home to receive such an ovation as no 
American citizen has ever had. Six years of 
private life were followed by a financial dis- 
aster that threatened to destroy his good 
260 



American Soldiers and Sailors 

name itself. Grant was one who made ill- 
advised haste to become rich. Scandalized 
by the deceit and impoverished by the failure 
of men he had trusted as partners, the great 
soldier was now assaulted by worry and 
fear. Our best physicians believe that fear, 
whether related to property or the loss of 
name, or grievous disappointment, is in some 
way related to cancer. And within a few 
months after that awful wreckage. Grant 
knew that his life was coming to an end. 

The soldier became an author. Stricken 
with death, in the hope of safeguarding 
his family against poverty Grant decided to 
WTite his memou^s. It was an astonishing 
literary achievement. His style is simple as 
sunshine. Grant knew what he wanted to 
say, said it, and had done. Yet all the time 
a shadow was falling upon the page,— the 
shadow made by the messenger of death, 
who stood by Grant's shoulder, ready to 
claim his own. Slowly the soldier wrote 
the story of his youth, his campaigns in the 
West, his battles in the Wilderness, while 
every day the hand grew feebler. 

Eeared in a religious atmosphere, Grant's 
nature was essentiall}^ moral and religious. 
He possessed all the big essential virtues — 
261 



Heroes of Battle 

honesty, justice, truth, honour, good will. He 
loved the truth. He felt that he had done 
what he could. Southern soldiers and gen- 
erals as well as Northern comrades and 
friends brought to his bedside messages of 
affection and good cheer. At length he fell 
asleep. His tomb on the height above the 
Hudson has become a Mecca for innumerable 
multitudes. 

To the end of time, perhaps, Lincoln will 
be remembered as the Martyr President, the 
best loved of all our leaders, the great 
Emancipator, the gentlest memory of our 
world ; but side by side with Lincoln will 
stand Grant, the man of oak and rock, the 
man of iron will, who fought the war to a 
successful issue, and will be known in history 
as the greatest soldier of the Kepublic. 



262 



XI 



THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE AT HOME 

WHO SUPPOKTED THE SOLDIEKS 

AT THE FEOIS^T 

IT is a proverb that nothing moves men 
like tales of eloquence and heroism. His- 
torians and poets alike believe that stories of 
bravery and anecdotes of heroes exert a pro- 
found influence upon young hearts. Here 
is Socrates. His judges condemn him to the 
jail and poison. Socrates quails not, and 
says : " At what price would one not estimate 
one night of noble conference with Homer 
and Hesiod ? You, my judges, go home to 
your banquets — I to hemlock and death; 
but whether it is better for you than for me, 
God knoweth." It is a moving story. Here 
is the early missionary martyr, fettered and 
brought before a cruel t}Tant, to be con- 
demned to death. The missionary lifts his 
chains, calls the roll of the king's crimes, 
flashes the sword of justice, coerces the 
monarch from his throne, makes him crawl, 
beg, plead, and beseech the missionary's pity 
263 



The Life of the People at Home 

and prayers, for speech has made a prisoner 
king, and turned a monarch into a captive. 
It is a moving tale. And here are the stories 
of war: Xenophon's ten thousand young 
Greeks, lost in the heart of the great nation, 
a thousand miles from home, without maps, 
without food, outnumbered daily ten to one, 
living off the country, fighting all day, sur- 
rounded by a fresh army each night, stead- 
ily pursuing their famous retreat. See, too, 
the handful at Thermopylae, defending the 
Pass, and every one of them giving his life. 
And here are the Dutch, driven by the 
Bloody Alva into the Xorth Sea, clinging to 
the dykes by their finger-tips, and fighting 
their way back to their homes and altars. 
And here are the American boys confined to 
the prison ship, the Jersey^ starved victims 
of scurvy and fever, without food, without 
medicine, with the corpses of their brothers 
floating in the water just outside, boys whose 
monument stands yonder in Fort Greene. 
What a tale of martyrdom is theirs ! 

Yet the history of heroism holds no more 
thrilling story than that of the soldiers of our 
Civil War. Every other passage, every other 
incident, that we have passed in review can 
be more than duplicated by soldier boys who 
264 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

have lent new meaning to patriotism and 
mart3rrdom. As many men died in Southern 
prisons as fell on both sides at the battle 
of Gettysburg. This is their story — they 
counted life not dear unto themselves ; they 
struggled unto blood, striving against op- 
pression, and the world itself, with all its 
beauty, was not worthy of them. 

Our prosperous generation, threatened 
with effeminacy and softness, needs to re- 
open the pages of history and to linger long 
upon the portraits of our heroic leaders. 
Theirs was the greatest war that ever shook 
the earth. A million iSTorthern men, and 
.over against them a million Southern men, 
and a battle line a thousand miles in length ! 
Including the long-term men and the short- 
term service, 3,000,000 men engaged in the 
conflict ! Two thousand two hundred and 
sixty-one battles fought — if we mention con- 
flicts in which there were more than five 
hundred engaged on each side. When Lee 
surrendered, his land was desolate. Armies 
upon armies of cripples came home to suffer ! 
There were a million widows and over three 
million orphan children ! Men who at Lin- 
coln's call for troops left the college and the 
university discovered, when it was all over, 
265 



The Lite of the People at Home 

that it was too late to take up their studies, 
and lived on like unfulfilled prophecies. 
Others, who during those four years poured 
out all the vital nerve forces, brought so 
little strength out of the long, bitter strug- 
gle that they might better have died, and 
for years have been in the invalid's chair, 
looking with wistful eyes on the great pro- 
cession of society moving on to industrial 
victories ! The war all over ? The war has 
been continued in its influences throughout 
the entire generation ! It never will be over 
until the last cripple has dropped his maimed 
body, until the last child, robbed of a dead 
father's care, has recovered his losses, and 
the last woman who has lived alone through 
the years has found her beloved ! 

The courage and endurance of the South- 
ern women, who took full charge of the cot- 
ton plantations and helped support Lee's 
army, stirs the sense of wonder. There were 
many JSTorthern women who had no relatives 
at the front, but there was scarcely a South- 
ern home where the father, husband or sons 
were not on the battle line. For that rea- 
son the Southern women were always in a 
state of suspense. Homes were entirely 
broken up during the four years. The men 
266 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

were at the front, and all the women were 
either at work at home or were in the hos- 
pitals as nurses. During 1862 and 1863 
practically every church in Richmond was a 
hospital, and there were twenty- five other 
buildings used by surgeons. Physicians had 
no morphine and no quinine. For coffee 
they used parched corn. Tea rose to $500 a 
pound. For sugar they steeped watermelon 
rind. For soda these women burned corn- 
cobs and mixed the ashes with their corn- 
meal. They had neither ice nor salt. They 
tore up their ingrain carpets to make trousers 
for the soldiers. AVomen wore coarse hemp 
and calico. Having no leather, one little 
factory turned out five hundred pairs of 
wooden shoes a month in Richmond. 

When Lee needed bullets, a minister tore 
the lead pipe out of his house in Richmond to 
send the lead to Lee. Flour rose to $-100 a bar- 
rel. In one little town iron became so scarce 
that tenpenny nails were used for money. l>lo 
tale more pitiful than that of the women who 
took charge of the slaves on the plantation, 
comforted their little children, buried their 
dead, smiled, wept, prayed, worked, com- 
pelled their lips to silence, staggered on, 
groaned inly while they taught men peace, 
267 



The Life of the People at Home 

and died while others were smiling. "Whether 
or not men are made in the image of God, 
these women certainly were. And it was 
because they believed with all their mind 
and soul that independence for the State was 
the sovereign gift of God ; and they died for 
independence, just as the boys in blue lived 
and died for the Union. 

It was this moral earnestness and intensity 
of conviction that made the w^ar so terrible. 
When England hired Hessians to fight "Wash- 
ington's troops, and they fought for so much 
a week, the hired soldiers were slow to begin 
attack and quick to retreat. Mercenaries 
have to be scourged into battle. Stonewall 
Jackson's men believed in their cause and 
thirsted for the excitement of the attack and 
onslaught. And yet all the time the two 
opposing armies maintained mutual respect 
and even developed a new sense of brother- 
hood as the desperate struggle went on. 
Never was there a war carried on with such 
intensity by day and such a sense of mutual 
respect at night. Once when the Eappahan- 
nock separated the two armies, and it was 
evident that there was no campaign beyond, 
a revival broke out in one of Stonewall Jack- 
son's regiments and there were prayer-meet- 
268 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

ings in almost every tent every night. Be- 
coming acquainted, a nimiber of boys in bhie 
by previous arrangement crossed the river, 
and knelt in the prayer service. One night 
the sound of the regiments singing, " Nearer 
My God to Thee," rolled through the air 
across the river, and finally the boys in the 
Northern army joined in, until at the last 
verse, the two regiments, opposed in arms, 
were one in voice and heart, as they poured 
out their souls to God in the old h\Tnn they 
had learned at their mother's knee. For the 
soldier knew that any moment a shot might 
bring the end. 

The sufferings of men in prisons touch the 
note of horror. The national government is 
planning a monument for those who died 
in Andersonville. Gettj^sburg slew 26,000, 
Andersonville 32,000. The stockade in- 
cluded twenty-six acres, but three acres were 
marsh. Incredible as it may seem, there 
was no shelter, no beds, no cook-house, no 
hospital, no nothing. Just the cold rain in 
winter chilling men to death, just the piti- 
less glare of the August sun scorching them 
to death. There was no sanitation, and when 
it rained the little stream backed up the 
sewage, and after each shower men died by 
269 



The Life of the People at Home 

scores. Wirtz wrote Jefferson Davis that 
one-fifth of the meal was bran, and that he 
had no meat, no medicine, no clothing. 
Men burrowed in the ground, dug caves like 
rats, and not infrequently fifty bodies were 
carried out in a single day. Wirtz destroyed 
men faster than did General Lee. The men 
imprisoned in Anderson ville urge that there 
were thousands of cords of wood just outside 
the stockade, miles upon miles of forests all 
about, that the prisoners could have built 
their own shanties and hospitals, and cook- 
houses. To which Wirtz's friends answer 
that he did not have weapons or Confederate 
soldiers enough to guard the prisoners on 
parole. While they also answer that the 
prisoners in Andersonville had as much food 
and the same kind as Lee's army was then 
enjoying. The plain fact is that the South 
was out of medicine, clothing and food, and 
was itself on the edge of starvation. 

The wonderful thing is that these Union 
boys, 32,000 of them, who died at Anderson- 
ville, could at any moment have obtained 
release by taking the oath not to renew 
arms against the South. Some few did es- 
cape by digging'under the stockade — but what 
perils the\^ endured to escape from the 
270 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

enemy's country I They slept in leaves by 
day, and travelled by night. They were 
pursued by bloodhounds, lay in water and 
swamps, with only theu' lips above the tilth 
until the peril had passed by. They wore 
rags, ate roots, shivered in the rains, sweltered 
in the heat, grew more emaciated, until more 
dead than alive they reached the Northern 
lines. 

Now that it is all over. Confederate soldiers 
like General John B. Gordon have said on a 
hundred lecture platforms in Northern cities 
that, having done what he could for States* 
rights and to destroy the Union, he thanked 
God above all things else that he was not 
successful. In the spirit of Abraham Lin- 
coln, that great Southern soldier wrote the 
last words of his life, in the hope that they 
would help cement the Union between the 
North and the South : — " The issues that di- 
vided the sections were born when the Ee- 
public was born, and were forever buried in 
an ocean of fraternal blood, ^^e shall then 
see that, under God's providence, every sheet 
of flame from the blazing rifles of the con- 
tending armies, every whizzing shell that tore 
through the forests at Shiloh and Chancel- 
lorsville, every cannon shot that shook Chick- 
2; I 



The Life of the People at Home 

amauga's hills or thundered around the 
heights of Gettysburg, and all the blood and 
the tears that were shed are yet to become 
contributions for the upbuilding of Ameri- 
can manhood and for the future defense of 
American freedom. The Christian Church 
received its baptism of pentecostal power as 
it emerged from the shadows of Calvary, and 
went forth to its world-wide work with 
greater unity and a diviner purpose. So 
the Kepublic, rismg from its baptism of blood 
with a national life more robust, a national 
union more complete, and a national influ- 
ence ever widening, shall go forever forward 
in its benign mission to humanity." 

ISTor must we forget the work of nurses, the 
members of the Sanitary Commission, and 
the Christian Commission Movement. The 
events of the Kussian-Japanese war show 
what is a wonderful progress of science. 
Japan sent along with her army experts on 
the water, the food, and the placing of tents, 
that made typhoid, cholera and the usual 
diseases impossible. Her surgeons used an- 
tiseptic methods, and gangrene was practi- 
cally unknown in the Japanese hospitals. 
But the situation was different in 1861. 
Modern sanitation, surgery, antiseptic meth- 
272 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

ods, chlorofonn and ether are comparatively 
recent discoveries. Such anesthetics as the 
surgeons had were poor in quality and in- 
sufficient in quantity. In the camps fever 
was prevalent. Smallpox, measles and lesser 
diseases became malignant and wrought ter- 
rible ravages. Tents became more danger- 
ous than battle-fields. What the bullet be- 
gan, the hospitals completed. More men 
died through disease than through leaden 
hail. But the noble army of physicians and 
nurses wrought wonders. Think of it ! 
Twenty-six thousand men dead or dying on 
the field of Gettysburg ! 

Here is a page torn from the journal of one 
of the nurses there : " "We begin the day with 
the wounded and sick by washing and fresh- 
ening them. Then the surgeons and dressers 
make their rounds, open the wounds, apply the 
remedies and replace the bandages. This is 
the awful hour. I put my fingers in my ears 
this morning. When it is over we go back to 
the men and put the ward in order once more, 
remaking the beds and giving clean handker- 
chiefs with a little cologne or bay water upon 
them, so prized in the sickening atmosphere 
of wounds. Then we keep going round and 
round, wetting the bandages, going from cot 
273 



The Life of the People at Home 

to cot almost without stopping, giving medi- 
cine and brandy according to orders. I am 
astonished at the whole-souled and whole- 
bodied devotion of the surgeons. Men in 
every condition of horror, shattered and 
shrieking, are brought in on stretchers and 
dumped down anywhere." Men shattered in 
the thigh, and even cases of amputation were 
shovelled into berths without blanket, with- 
out thought or mercy. It could not have 
been otherwise. Other hundreds and thou- 
sands were out on the field of Gettysburg 
bleeding to death, and every minute was 
precious. 

No page can ever describe the service of 
nurses, sisters of mercy, chaplains, brave men 
and kind women, who took train and went to 
the front upon news of the battle and re- 
mained there for weeks. 

But while the soldier boys were striving 
unto blood for their convictions, what 
about the people at home who loved them ? 
How did they carry their burdens and fulfill 
their task that was not less important ? 
Fortunately, during the war, the North was 
blessed with four bountiful harvests that 
were rich enough, not only to support the 
people at home, and the soldiers at the front, 
274 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

but also to furnish an excess of food that 
could be sold abroad to obtain money with 
which to help support the war. It seemed as 
if the sun, the rain, and the soil had entered 
into a conspirac}^ to support the Korth and 
liberty. The largest crop of wheat and 
corn ever garnered before the war was in 
1859. At that time, men thought the 
harvest would never be surpassed. But 
strangely enough, that bumper crop of 1859 
was surpassed four times in succession dm'ing 
the Civil War. Meanwhile the herds of cattle 
and the flocks of sheep more than doubled 
during the conflict, and all of the land that 
was not yellow with grain became a rich 
pasture and meadow, covered with cattle, 
sheep and horses. 

Even the losses of sugar and cotton usually 
purchased from the South w^ere made up to 
the North. Threatened with the loss of 
the Southern sugar, sorghum cane was im- 
ported from China, and the people scarcely 
missed the Southern sugar. When the cot- 
ton failed, the unwonted increase of the 
flocks furnished wool for raiment. It stirs 
wonder to reflect that one poor crop of 
wheat and corn might have changed the 
issue, and defeated the North. Singularly 
275 



The Life of the People at Home 

enough also, the failure of crops m Europe 
not only offered a market for the unexpected 
Northern surplus, but yielded the highest 
price ever known, thus bringing in a golden 
river to enrich the Northern people. Jeffer- 
son Davis had said at the beginning of the 
vr2iY that " grass would soon be growing not 
sunply in the streets of the villages of the 
North, but in Broadway and Wall Street." 
Davis believed that the withdrawal of every 
fourth man would make our problem of 
food and clothing impossible of solution. 
But at that moment the invention of the 
reaper enabled one harvester to do the work 
of ten men, and the new tools actually more 
than took the place of the Northern soldiers 
who were at the front. 

Furthermore, the spirit of patriotism and 
self-sacrifice descended upon the Northern 
women. On the little farms where the 
farmer's wife was too poor to buy a reaper, 
the mother and the daughters went into the 
field to plough the corn and thrash the wheat 
and milk the cows. In many counties in 
Iowa and Kansas one-half of the men were at 
the front, and in harvest time it is said that 
there were more women workmg in the 
wheat and corn fields than men. 
276 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

One other element fought for liberty and 
the North. A strange uni'est fell upon 
Europe. Foreign peoples became discon- 
tented and began to migrate. In the sum- 
mer of 1862 a vast multitude landed upon the 
shores in New York, at the very time when 
there was a scarcity of labour in the shops 
and factories. At the very hour when Lin- 
coln was afraid that it might become impos- 
sible to clothe the army and equip it, the 
providence of God raised up foreigners who 
stepped into the place made vacant by the 
newly enlisted soldier ; thereafter the North 
throughout the war actually increased in 
population, in wealth, in manufacturing in- 
terests. The Civil War ended with the 
North richer and more prosperous than when 
it began ; while in 1861 slavery had im- 
poverished the South, and war left the Con- 
federacy crushed to the very earth, peeled 
and stripped, famished and utterly broken. 
For the South never yielded until she had 
cast in the last earthly possession, and knew 
that only life and breath were left. 

Despite the abundant harvests, during the 

early part of the war the Northern people 

passed through gloom, anxiety and bitter 

disappointment. At first the colleges and 

277 



The Life of the People at Home 

universities were empty, because the students 
had all gone to the front, but the common 
schools were as full as usual. The churches 
were better attended than formerly, while 
the newspapers were more widely read than 
ever before. The crisis sobered the people. 
The serious note was manifest. One by one 
luxuries were given up, amusements seemed 
paltry, and people forgot their usual diver- 
sions. After Bull Kun came a succession of 
calamities. Longfellow writes: "Sumner 
came to dine last night, but the evening was 
most gloomy, and all went away in tears." 
Governor Morton of Indiana wrote Lincoln, 
" Another three months like the last six, and 
we are lost." Kobert Winthi-op of Boston 
came down to Xew York, and spoke of three 
scenes that he had witnessed. The first was 
a group of soldiers on their way home, in 
charge of friends, some crippled, some ema- 
ciated, gaunt and broken, and the rest carried 
on stretchers. At another station he saw a 
group of young soldiers, intelligent, athletic 
and sturdy, climbing on the car to start to the 
front, but on the platform was a group of pale- 
cheeked and weeping women, wives, mothers 
and sweethearts. " Oh, it was terrible ! It 
is aU black, black, black ! " said Winthrop. 
278 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

But after the battle of Gettysburg, the 
high-water mark of the war, meu's spirits 
began to rise. The North became inured 
to excitement. The emotion was converted 
into hard work and endurance, and that 
dogged determination to produce the rai- 
ment, the weapons and the food to support 
the army, or die in the attempt. Depositors 
took risks and loaned their money to the 
banks. Bankers took their courage in their 
hands and loaned the money to the manu- 
facturers ; manufacturers advertised for 
labour in Europe and started up their 
factories by night as well as by day. 
Wages rose, the balance of trade was 
largely in favour of the North, the oil 
regions began to prosper, and industry, com- 
merce and finance all waxed mighty. In 
1864 the whole land was in the full sweep 
of industrial prosperity. The debts incident 
to the panic of 185 7 were fully liquidated. 
Iron is the barometer, and the country 
doubled its consumption of iron. An editor 
writing of his city says, " Old Hartford 
seems fat and rich and cozy, and everything 
is as tranquil as if there were no war." 

But the industrial conditions of life in the 
South were very different. Be it remem- 

2/9 



The Life of the People at Home 

bered that the North was a self-supporting 
region, both as to foods and manufactured 
articles, while the South, under slavery, pro- 
duced raw material, and used that raw stuff 
to build up factories in England. When the 
war came the South found herself without 
the means of supplying her own wants. 
Within six months the South discovered 
that every axe and saw and steam-engine 
and iron rail and bolt and nail had come 
from the North. Davis sent out men to 
scurry the country for old stoves and every 
iron scrap was picked up to be melted into 
weapons. At the close of the war tenpenuy 
nails were used as five-cent pieces and currency 
in North Carolina. To crown all other dis- 
asters came the debasement of the currency. 
Macaulay says that the world has suffered less 
from bad kings than from bad shillings and 
sixpences. The Confederacy issued one 
billion dollars of paper money, States issued 
another flood of promises to pay, cities put 
out municipal currency, fire and life insur- 
ances their shin-plasters, and they kept pour- 
ing out paper money until finally all the 
printing presses broke down. A month be- 
fore the collapse, a Confederate soldier, re- 
turning to his little cabin, paid $10,000 for 
280 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

a lif teen-year-old mule, knee sprung in front 
and spavined behind, and $7,500 for the 
shoes for shoeing the mule. 

Lee's army would have collapsed but for 
the marvellous heroism, resourcefulness and 
courage of the Southern women. They took 
charge of the fields, planted the crops, 
gathered the harvests, and staggered on to 
the end. Xot one Korthern home in five 
was death-stricken through the war, but 
practically every Southern home had lost 
one or two members of the family, through 
father, son or brother. 

Nor must we forget what Lee owed to the 
fidelity of the negroes. Instead of insurrec- 
tion, arson, pillage and murder in Southern 
towns and old homesteads, the Southern 
slave remained true to his mistress, and was 
the very soul of fidelity. Yet when the war 
was over, the town had become a wilderness, 
the plantation a desolation, and where there 
had been prosperity and even luxury, famine 
and want and disease had set up their abid- 
ing places. Yerily secession sowed the wind 
and reaped the whirlwind of destruction. 

That the war influenced some people for 
good and influenced others for evil is beyond 
all doubt. During the first two years it was 
281 



The Life of the People at Home 

a distinct toiiic to the intellect and conscience 
of the people. The sense of national peril 
quickened the dull and lethargic, steadied 
the weak drifters, furnished ballast to all 
the people, made the strong stronger, made 
the brave more heroic. The first sign of 
national decay is the note of frivolity. The 
sure sign of greatness in a generation is 
the note of seriousness. In the middle of 
1863 James Russell Lowell wrote Bancroft 
that the war had been a great, a divine and 
a wholly unmixed blessing, and that all of 
the people were exalted to new levels. Had 
the war ceased with the battle of Gettys- 
burg, probably Lowell's statement would 
have held true, but later came the reaction 
towards graft and corruption, intemperance, 
profligacy and gambling. Within four years 
the representatives of the government ex- 
pended from seven to eight billions of dol- 
lars. Government contractors bought at a 
single time 50,000 suits of clothes, 100,000 
rifles, 200,000 blankets. The temptation to 
graft was strong for all and irresistible to a 
few. The government records speak of one 
horse-trader in St. Louis who bought his 
horses and mules at $75 and sold them to 
the government for $150, and made enough 
282 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

to buy Mississippi steamboats for $65,000. 
He then rented these boats to the govern- 
ment for one year for $295,000, and at the 
end of the year still owned the boats. To 
what extent charges of graft were made is 
indicated by the fact that one claim was 
reduced from fifty millions to thirty-three 
millions. A cartoon of that time with 
strange exaggeration represents one man 
saying to his friend, " So-and-so has obtained 
a third contract from the government." To 
which his friend answers, " Well, well ! A 
couple of more contracts and he will die 
worth a million." For any manufacturer to 
obtain a government contract was for that 
man to be on the highroad to wealth. 

Yet the historians who analyze these re- 
ports find a large amount of exaggeration 
in the statements. Some waste there was, 
but the authorities seem to think that it was 
the waste of inexperience for the most part. 
When the war opened the Xavy Department 
was spending 81,000,000 a year. By 1862 
it was spending $145,000,000, and with no 
organization to handle such enormous inter- 
ests. In general, in view of the sudden 
emergency thrust upon the people, the mar- 
vel is not that there was so much corruption 
283 



The Life of the People at Home 

among government contractors, but that 
there were so many honest contractors, and 
that there was so little waste through inex- 
perience. 

In general it may be said that the moral 
and religious sentiment of both North and 
South alike steadily strengthened during the 
conflict. After Gettysburg, the Southern 
people and army, always deeply religious, 
in their distress turned to thek fathers' God 
for support. Jackson and Lee's men fought 
by day, and held prayer-meetings by night. 
In the North, durmg 1861 and '62 and '63, 
religious meetings were held all over the 
land. When the winter twilight fell, the 
candles began to burn in the little school- 
houses, where the farmers assembled and 
prayed to God. In the small towns and 
tiny villages the little churches were packed 
with worshippers, not simply on Sundays but 
during the evenings of the week. During 
this interval the layman became as influen- 
tial as the ordained preachers. At this 
time, the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion took its rise, all of the old men saw 
visions, and all of the young men dreamed 
dreams, and many a Saul was found among 
the prophets. Poets like Lowell were moved 
284 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

by deeply religious inspirations. During 
the war Whittier wrote his loftiest songs 
and his noblest and most exalted prayers. 
The influence of the great conflict upon 
philosophers like Emerson is easily traced. 
American literature lost its note of unreality. 
Preaching became practical. There was a 
revival of ethics in politics. The war cleared 
the atmosphere of the country by sweeping 
away slavery with all its foundation of lies. 

Wendell Phillips once said the French 
Revolution was the greatest and most un- 
mixed blessing of the last one thousand 
years. Now that it is all over, and the slain 
soldiers and the brave women who went 
dow^n in the conflict have had all their hard 
questions asked before the throne of God, 
perhaps these heroes and heroines who now 
live unto God look back upon this era as an 
era of sorrow overruled for justice and liberty. 
The conclusion of the whole matter is this : 
a good house must be founded upon a rock, 
and no government or civilization can be 
permanent that is not based on the freedom, 
property and intelligence of the working 
classes. 

To-day the leaders of thought in the South 
believe that Lee and Gordon were right in 
285 



The Life of the People at Home 

the statement that they " thanked God that 
they failed to establish States' rights, and 
that Northern men had succeeded in main- 
taining the Union." Time has cleared the 
air of mismiderstandings. At last the IS'orth 
and South understand Lincoln's last words 
re2:ardinff the Civil War: "Both read the 
same Bible and pray to the same God, and 
each invokes His aid against the other. It 
may seem strange that any men should dare 
to ask a just God's assistance in wringing 
their bread from the sweat of other men's 
faces ; but let us judge not, that we be not 
judged. The prayers of both could not be 
answered — that of neither has been answered 
fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 
^ Woe unto the world because of offenses ; 
for it must needs be that offenses come ; but 
woe to that man by whom the offense com- 
eth.' If we shall suppose that American 
slavery is one of those offenses which, in the 
Providence of God, must needs come, but 
which having continued through His ap- 
pointed time, He now wills to remove, and 
that He gives to both Korth and South this 
terrible war, as the woe due to those by 
whom the offense came, shall we discern 
therein any departure from those divine 
286 



Who Supported the Soldiers at the Front 

attributes which the believers in a living 
God always ascribe to Ilim ? Fondly do 
we hope — fervently do we pray — that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
away. Yet, if God wills that it continue 
until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited 
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of 
blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by 
another drop of blood drawn by the sword, 
as was said three thousand years ago, so still 
it must be said, ' The judgments of the Lord 
are true and righteous altogether.' With 
malice towards none ; Avith charity for all ; 
with firmness in the right, as God gives us 
to see the right, let us strive on to finish the 
work we are in; to bind up the nation's 
wounds ; to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle, and for his widow and 
orphan ; to do all which may achieve and 
cherish a just and lasting peace among our- 
selves and with all nations." 



287 



XII 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN : THE MAR- 
TYRED PRESIDENT 

AMONG the heroes who helped save the 
Republic, the last, best hope of earth, 
in that it gives liberty to the slaves, that 
it might assure freedom to the free, stands 
Abraham Lincoln, the emancipator and 
martyr. Take him all in all, Abraham Lin- 
coln is the greatest thing the Republic has 
achieved. History tells of no child who 
passed from a cradle so humble to a grave 
so illustrious. The institutions of the Repub- 
lic were founded for the manufacture of a 
good quality of soul. In the presence of the 
greatest men of history we can point with 
pride to Lincoln, saying, " This is the kind 
of man the institutions of the Republic can 
produce." For Lincoln's most striking char- 
acteristic was his Americanism. At best, 
"Washington was a patrician, the fine prod- 
uct of aristocratic institutions, so that Eng- 
land claimed him. Washington was the 
richest man of his era, his home an old 
288 



The Martyred President 

manor house, his estate wide inherited acres, 
his relative an English baronet, his brother 
the child of Oxford University. The books 
he read were English books, the teachers 
he had were English tutors. The root was 
planted in English soil, though it fruited 
under American skies. But Americanism is 
the very essence of Lincoln's thoughts, Lin- 
coln's enthusiasm, Lincoln's utterances, and 
Lincoln's character. One of the golden words 
of the Eepublic is the word " opportunity." 
Here, all the highways that lead to office, 
land and honour must be open unto all young 
feet. A banker's son may climb to the gov- 
ernor's mansion, or the White House, but so 
may the washerwoman's. The widow's son 
practices eloquence in the corn fields of Yir- 
ginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and 
we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. 
A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the 
October grass, driving an old red cow to the 
barn lot, but we bring McKinley to the White 
House. 

Yonder stands the Temple of Fame. The 
door is open by day and by night, and a 
tall, thin, sallow boy turns his back upon a 
log cabin in Hlinois and seeks entrance. But 
the angel at the threshold asks hard ques- 
289 



Abraham Lincoln 

tions : " Can you eat crusts ? Can you wear 
rags ? Can you sleep in a garret ? Can you 
endure sleepless nights and days of toil ? 
Can you bear up against every wind that 
assails your bark ? Can you live for liberty 
and God's truth, and can you die for them ? " 
And that boy bowed his assent. Washing- 
ton climbed hand over hand up the golden 
rounds of the ladder of success ; Lincoln 
built the ladder up which he climbed out of 
the fence rails which his own hands had 
split. Like his Dinne Master, he touched 
two or thi*ee crusts and turned them into 
bread for the hungry multitudes. 

His little log cabin shames our palaces. 
His three books, the Bible, the " Pilgrim's 
Progress " and " ^sop's Fables " eclipse our 
libraries. His six months in a log school- 
house were more than equal to our eight 
years in lecture hall and university. His 
fidelity to the great convictions shames our 
shifting politicians. For fifty years he 
walked forward under clouded skies. Like 
Dante, he held heart-break at bay. During 
one brief epoch only did his sun clear itself 
of clouds. He died without full recognition 
or reward. In retrospect he stands forth 
the saddest and sweetest, the strongest and 
290 



The Martyred President 

gentlest, the most picturesque and the most 
pathetic figure in our history. The Saviour 
of the world was born in a stable and cradled 
in a manger, and went by the Yia Dolorosa 
towards the world's throne. Kot otherwise 
Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin, more 
suited for herds and flocks than for a young 
mother and a little child ; and by the way of 
poverty and adversity the great emancipator 
travelled towards his throne of influence and 
world supremacy. 

History holds a few deeds so great that 
they can be done but once. There are some 
laws, some reforms and some liberties that 
once achieved are always achieved. Thus, 
Columbus discovered this new world, but 
his achievement reduced all the other ex- 
plorers to the level of imitators. Thus Isaac 
Xewton discovered gravity, and in a moment 
every other astronomer became a pupil and a 
disciple. There never can be but one James 
Watt, for, though a thousand inventors im- 
prove his engine, theu^ names are little 
tapers, shining over against the sun. The 
last century offered men of genius two signal 
opportunities, and there were a thousand 
eager aspirants for the honour. Charles 
Darwin discovered the golden key that un- 
291 



Abraham Lincoln 

locked the kingdom of nature and life, and 
carried off the honours of science. Abra- 
ham Lincoln, in an hour when some would 
meanly lose it, planned to nobly save the 
Union, emancipated three million slaves, 
and carried off the honours in the realm of 
reform and liberty. 

How great was the work done by this man 
and how supreme was the man himself, we 
can best understand by comparison and con- 
trast. Among small men it is easy to be 
great. In Patagonia, where everybody eats 
blubber, a boy in the first reader is a prodigy 
of learning. 

Anybody can be a giant in heroism and re- 
form among Hottentots and South Sea sav- 
ages. But the era of the Civil War was an 
era of heroes. Great men walked in regi- 
ments up and down the land. It was the age 
of Daniel Webster, whose genius is so won- 
derful that he achieved the four supreme 
things of four realms, — the greatest legal 
argument we have, the Dartmouth College 
case ; the greatest plea before a judge 
and jury, the Knapp murder case ; our 
finest outburst of inspirational eloquence, 
the oration at Bunker Hill ; the greatest 
argument in defense of the Constitution, his 
292 



The Martyred President 

reply to Hayne. It was the age of John 
C. Calhoun, a statesman whose political the- 
ories led half a continent to deeds of daring 
war. It was the era of Seward, the all-round 
scholar, of Chase the greatest secretary of 
treasury since Alexander Hamilton, a man 
who struck the rock with the rod of his 
genius, and made the waters of finance flow 
forth from the desert. It was the age of our 
greatest orators, for then Wendell Phillips 
and Beecher were at their best. It was the 
era of Emerson, the philosopher ; of Theodore 
Parker, the reformer ; of Garrison, the aboli- 
tionist ; of Lovejo}^, the martyr ; of Lowell 
and Whit tier, the poets of freedom ; of 
Greeley, the editor ; it was also the age of 
the greatest soldiers, Grant and Sherman, 
and Sheridan and Lee. The great man is a 
form of fruit ripened in an atmosphere made 
w^arm and genial, and the climate that 
nurtured Lincoln unfolded the talents that 
represented also other forms of mental fruit. 
Among these men Lincoln lived and wrote 
and spoke, and suffered and died ; — but he 
stands forth a master among men, an indis- 
putable genius, one of the five supreme states- 
men of all history. 

Now if we are to understand the unique 
293 



Abraham Lincoln 

place of Abraham Lincoln in oui' history we 
must recall again for a moment the men who 
set the battle lines in array. Unfortunately, 
most of our histories tell our children and 
youth that the Civil War raged about the 
slave. As a matter of fact, slavery was the 
occasion of the war, but not the cause. 
Slavery was the sulphur match that exploded 
the powder magazine, though the powder 
magazine could have been set off by a spark 
from the flint and steel, or a hundred other 
methods. 

The Civil War was really fought over the 
question whether a constitutionally formed 
nation dedicated to the proposition that all 
men are created equal could permanently 
endure. The whole period from ITS 9 to 
1865 was a critical period, during which the 
Constitution was being tested and tried out. 

During this testing many forms of seces- 
sion were planned, and several actual re- 
bellions took place. In 17S7 there was a 
Massachusetts rebellion under Shays, over 
the question of taxation. In 1794 there was 
what was known as the Whiskey Eebellion 
in Pennsylvania. In 1830 to 1835 there was 
a secession movement on in South Carolina, 
and President Jackson put down that re- 
294 



The Martyred President 

bellion over the tariff. Then Daniel Web- 
ster marked out the final lines of battle, 
entrenching the Constitution against rebel- 
lious attempts. Webster fired the first shot 
of the war, whose last shot was fired at 
Appomattox. Webster carried the flag that 
Grant followed at Yicksburg, and shook out 
the folds of the banner that was crimsoned 
with blood at Gettysburg. It was Webster's 
banner that Anderson pulled down at Fort 
Sumter, under the stress of fire, and it was 
Webster's banner that, four years later to an 
hour, the same General Anderson pulled up 
on the same flagstaff at the same Fort 
Sumter. 

During the period of the thirties and the 
forties, the conflict was a conflict of words 
and arguments between men like Webster 
and Calhoun and Garrison and Phillips. 
Later, the strife took on the form of a 
guerrilla warfare, and here and there leaders 
like Lovejoy were martyred. At last the 
strife entered into politics, when Douglas 
and Lincoln struggled for the supremacy of 
their principles, — but always it was a question 
of Constitutional interpretation, against what- 
ever interest attacked the " supreme law." 

Soon the conflict entered the Church, and 
295 



Abraham Lincoln 

the American Tract Society, to hold the 
gifts of slave owners, forbade the distribu- 
tions of Testaments to slaves, while the 
Bishop of Kew Jersey destroyed an edition 
of the Prayer Book because it contained a 
picture of Ary Scheffer's picture of " Christ 
the Emancipator," who was engaged in strik- 
ing the shackles from slaves. The bishop 
was quite willing that Christ should open 
the eyes of the blind, make the deaf to 
hear and the lame to walk, but as for Jesus 
freeing the slaves — well, that was too much. 
Over the question of the Constitutional power 
of Congress to resist the further extension of 
slavery in newly opened territories, the whole 
land rocked with excitement. Liberty and 
Slavery, like two giants, grappled for the 
death struggle. In such an era God raised 
up Abraham Lincoln, to lead the people out 
of the wilderness, and into the Promised 
Land of Union, of Liberty, and of Peace. 

Kever was a candidate for universal fame 
born under so unfriendly a sky. His annals 
are "the short and simple annals of the 
poor." His home was a log cabin that had 
but three sides, the fourth one being a buffalo 
robe, swaying to and fro in the wind. When 
the biting wind of poverty became unbear- 
296 



The Martyred President 

able in Kentucky, the scant possessions were 
loaded upon a horse, carried across the Ohio, 
and the child walked barefooted through the 
forests of Indiana, where a new shack was 
built in the wilderness. There Lincoln's 
"angel mother" sickened and died — that 
mother to whom Lincoln said he owed all 
that he was or hoped to be. Then when the 
winter of poverty and discontent settled 
down blacker than ever, the father removed 
to another State, where the mud was deeper, 
and the winters colder, where nature was 
less propitious. Lying on his face, before 
blazing logs, the boy committed to memory 
the four Gospels, "^sop's Fables," and 
Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress." At nineteen 
he went to K'ew Orleans, and standing in 
the slave market saw a young girl sold at 
public auction, and told his brother, Dennis 
Hanks, that if he ever had a chance he 
would hit slavery the hardest blow he could. 
At twenty he split 1,200 rails for a 
farmer, whose wife wove for him three 
yards of cloth, dyed in walnut juice, with 
which he had a new suit of clothes. He 
started a little store, failed in business, be- 
came a surveyor, bought a copy of the Con- 
stitution of the United States and the Decla- 
29; 



Abraham Lincoln 

ration of Independence ; was made post- 
master ; several years later returned to the 
government agent the exact silver quarters 
and copper cents that he had kept tied up in 
a bag, because honesty meant that the iden- 
tical coins must be returned to the gov- 
ernment ; entered upon the study and the 
practice of the law ; was elected to the 
legislature, and reelected ; was sent to Con- 
gress, and on a second campaign for the 
United States senatorship from Illinois met 
his competitor, Stephen A. Douglas, in the 
great debate. Beginning this contest, he 
delivered the "house divided against itself 
cannot stand " speech ; and in the course of 
his marvellous debate made the issue between 
liberty and slavery so clear that a wayfaring 
man, though a fool, could not misunder- 
stand ; declared that if slavery was not 
wi'ong, there was nothing that was wrong. 
Soon he came to be looked upon as one w^ho 
each year would coin the happy phrase and 
the rhythmical watchword that would be 
taken upon the lips of 30,000,000 of people ; 
was made the leader of the new " party of 
freedom," and President. 

Now, with infinite skill and patience, he 
entered upon the task of proving that he 
298 



The Martyred President 

was the strongest man in bis Cabinet, the 
strongest man in the North, the strongest 
man in the country, and the only man who 
had the last fact in the case, and therefore 
had the right to rule. Seward, experienced 
politician and statesman that he was, began 
by delicately hinting to Lincoln that if he 
felt himself unequal to emergencies, he could 
rely upon his Secretary of State for guid- 
ance, and that he, Seward, would not evade 
the responsibility. Lincoln answered by 
reading Seward's statement of a possible 
measure, and then placing beside it a state- 
ment of his own that reduced Seward to 
the level of a schoolboy standing up be- 
side a giant. Then Stanton entered the lists 
as competitor, and quietly Lincoln asserted 
himself until Stanton's attitude became one 
of almost reverent worship, as he said of 
Lincoln, "Henceforth he belongs with the 
immortals." Then Greeley put in his claim 
for supremacy, and after Lincoln had pub- 
lished his answer to Horace Greeley, in 
lines as clear as crystal, and in words as 
gentle as sunbeams, not a man in the land 
but saw that Lincoln was intellectually head 
and shoulders above Horace Greeley. One 
by one and step by step he ascended the hills 
299 



Abraham Lincoln 

of difficulty. Kound b}^ round he cHmbed 
the ladder of fame. Katurally, therefore, 
his centennial was observed by a week's 
celebration, when all the wheels were still, 
and all the stores and factories were silent, 
when ninety millions of people were gathered 
into one vast audience chamber, when one 
name was upon all lips— the name of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, the emancipator of the slaves, 
the acknowledged master of men, who gave 
liberty to the slaves that he might assure 
freedom to the free. 

Thoughtless writers have talked Lincoln's 
ancestry down, and careless biographers 
have defamed him. Superficial students 
speak of him as a miracle, and say that 
his genius is surrounded with silence and 
mystery. But all that Abraham Lincoln 
was he had at the hands of his fathers and 
his mothers. Although their greatness was 
latent, his parents had as much ability in 
their way as their distinguished son had in 
his way. How do we know ? Because when 
God wants to call a strong man He begins 
by calling his father and mother. There 
never was a great man who did not have a 
great ancestry, even though the greatness 
may have been latent and unconscious. 
300 



The Martyred President 

Every strong man stands upon the shoulders 
of his ancestors. When you start for the top 
of Pike's Peak you start at Omaha. When 
you reach Denver you are six thousand feet 
in the air, and Pike's Peak is shouldered up 
on the foot-hills. Socrates is a great teacher, 
but look at Sphroniscus, the sculptor, his 
father. Paganini is a great musician, but 
Paganini was born of musicians whose wrists 
had muscles that stood out like whip-cords. 
Bach is a great musician, but there were 
forty people of the name of Bach mentioned 
in musical dictionaries. Charles Darwin is 
the great scientist, but there were four gen- 
erations of scientists who had made ready 
for Darwin, just as there were seven genera- 
tions of scholars that culminated in Emerson. 
And standing in the shadow behind Abraham 
Lincoln are half a dozen generations of men 
and women who handed forward to him a 
perfect logic engine, a sound mind, in a 
sound body ; a mental instrument that worked 
without fever and without friction and with- 
out flaw. At the hands of Stradivarius one 
piece of apple wood is fashioned into a violin. 
If Stradivarius passes by the other board 
because he has not time, let no man say the 
board that was undeveloped was not full of 
301 



Abraham Lincoln 

latent music. The Divine Artist and Archi- 
tect shaped Abraham Lincoln's nature into a 
world instrument, but the same quality and 
the stuff were in his father and mother, who 
lived and died a bundle of roots that were 
never planted, a handful of blossoms that 
never fruited. 

Lincoln's father and mother were like the 
crystal caves in their own Kentucky. There 
the traveller is led through a cave of crystals, 
newly discovered. One day a farmer plough- 
ing thought the ground sounded hollow un- 
der his feet. Going to the barn, he brought 
a spade and opened up an aperture. Fling- 
ing down a rope, his friends let the explorer 
down, and when the torches were lighted, lo, 
a cave as of amethysts, sapphires and dia- 
monds ! For generations the cave had been 
undiscovered and the jewels unkno^vn. Wild 
beasts had wandered above these flashing 
gems, and still more savage men had lived 
and fought and died there. And yet just 
beneath was this cave of splendid beauty. 
Oh, pathetic illustration of men who are big 
with talent, of women full of latent gifts, of 
fathers and mothers like Thomas Lincoln 
and his young wife, who struggle on without 
opportunity, who are denied their chance, 
302 



The Martyred President 

who are imprisoned by poverty, and fettered 
by circumstance, who are like birds beating 
bloody wings against the bars of an iron 
cage, who die unfulfilled prophecies, and 
dying, transfer their ambitions to their gifted 
children, believing that their son shall behold 
what the father and mother must die with- 
out seeing. God worked no miracle in 
Abraham Lincoln. 

There is a photograph of the signature of 
the grandfather upon a title deed in Cul- 
peper County in Yirginia. Now, place that 
signature side by side with the signature of 
Abraham Lincoln on the emancipation proc- 
lamation, and the strong, sinewy sweep in 
the signature of the grandfather comes down 
and repeats itself in the strong, steady clear- 
ness of the grandson. And perhaps the 
strong, sinewy sentence came down and re- 
peated itself also, for all fine thinking stands 
with one foot on fine brain fibre. The time 
has come for men Avith a sharp knife and 
a hot iron to expunge from two or three of 
the otherwise best biographies of Abraham 
Lincoln these false, superficial and ignorant 
statements about his ancestry. Science, ob- 
servation, experience, history and sifted facts 
all unite to tell us that whatever was great 
303 



Abraham Lincoln 

in its unfolding in the talent of Abraham 
Lincoln was great in the seed form in his 
father and mother. 

Where were the hidings of his power? 
Why is Lincoln revered above his fellows, 
the orators, the soldiers, and the statesmen 
and editors and secretaries of his time ? A 
line of contrast with the other great men 
who were his competitors for fame will make 
Lincoln's supremacy to stand forth as clear 
in outline as the mountains, and as bright as 
the stars. For example, Wendell Phillips 
was the agitator and orator of the aboli- 
tionists. Phillips said, " Emancipation is the 
essential thing. The Union secondary. If 
the Southern States will not emancipate the 
slaves, force them out of the Union." Horace 
Greeley was the editor of the war epoch. 
Greeley said, "Emancipation is first, the 
Union secondary. If they prefer slavery to 
liberty let the erring sisters go." Beecher 
was the all-round man of genius. His great 
speech in England began with an exordium 
at Manchester ; he stated the arguments at 
Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool ; he pro- 
nounced the peroration at Exeter Hall, in 
London, and no such peroration and elo- 
quence has been heard since Demosthenes' 
304 



The Martyred President 

philippic against the tja'ant of Macedon. But 
Beecher's criticisms of Lincoln in the Isew 
York Independent during April and May 
of 1862 led Lincoln to exclaim after reading 
one of them, " Is Thy servant a dog that 
he should do this thing ? " If these great 
men did not appreciate the national crisis, 
Lincoln understood it perfectly. Xow, over 
against the editorials of Beecher and Horace 
Greeley and the lectures of Phillips, stands 
Lincoln, and to these three men he sent 
words addressed only to Horace Greeley, ex- 
plaining to them why the time had not come 
for the Emancipation Proclamation. And 
although a part of this we have quoted in 
defense of Webster's position in 1850, that 
and yet more of the famous letter may well 
be repeated here : — 



" I would save the Union. 

" If there be those who would not save 
the Union unless they could at the same 
time save slavery, I do not agree with 
them. 

" My paramount object in this struggle is 
to save the LTnion, and not either to save or 
destroy slaveiy. 

" If I could save the Union without free- 
ing any slave, I would do it. 

305 



Abraham Lincoln 

" If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, 
I would do it. 

*' And if I could save it by fi-eeing some 
and leaving others alone, I would also do that. 

" What I do about slavery and the col- 
oured race I do because I believe it helps to 
save the Union ; and what I forbear, I forbear 
because I do not believe it would help to 
save the Union. 

'' I shall do less whenever I believe that 
what I am doing hurts the cause. 

'' And I shall do more whenever I believe 
that doing more will help the Union." 

How wonderfully does this publish the 
supremacy of Abraham Lincoln ! Lincoln 
saw clearly, where others had an indistinct 
vision. As to gravity, Isaac IN'ewton's vote 
outweighs all the other millions of men, and 
from the hour that Lincoln published this 
letter to Horace Greeley the people saw that 
Abraham Lincoln had the last fact in the 
case, saw the whole truth, saw it through and 
through. By sheer power, clarity of thought, 
strength of statement and fairness, Abraham 
Lincoln finally won over not only a luke- 
warm North, but a bitter South, until to- 
day he belongs to the ninety millions. If 
every Northerner should die, the brave and 
patriotic men of the South living now would 
306 



The Martyred President 

defend everything for Avhich Abraham Lin- 
coln lived and died. For at last it is true of 
both North and South, in Lincoln's own 
pathetic words, that the mystic chords of 
memory, stretching from every battle-field 
and patriot grave to every living heart and 
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
swell the chorus of the Union when again 
touched, as surely they will be, by the better 
angels of our nature. 

The most striking characteristic of Lin- 
coln's character was his honesty. Some men 
are naturally secretive: Lincoln was natu- 
rally open as sunshine. The exact fact, truth 
in the hidden parts, openness, these were the 
innermost fibre of his being. Machiavelli 
laid out the diplomat's career on the line of 
deceit, and concealing the cards. Lincoln 
would have made a poor diplomat, — he spread 
all his cards out on the table. He won from 
his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, the trib- 
ute, " Lincoln was the fakest and most 
honest man I ever knew." If there ever 
lived an absolutely honest lawyer, Lincoln 
was the man. In his work before the jury 
Lincoln never misrepresented his opponent's 
position, never twisted the testimony of the 
witness, never made biassed statements to 
307 



Abraham Lincoln 

win a verdict. Once a young lawyer who 
was opposing Lincoln made a poor plea for 
his client, and overlooked in his argument 
before the jury two most important con- 
siderations. Lincoln was restless, and greatly 
disturbed. He seemed to think that the law- 
yer's client had been badly used, and that 
his attorney had not given him a fair chance, 
or guarded his rights. When Lincoln arose, 
therefore, he began by saying that the op- 
posing counsel had overlooked the most 
important point. He then stated his op- 
ponent's position far more strongly than his 
lawyer had, and made the best possible state- 
ment for his opponent, to the astonishment 
and indignation of his own client, whom he 
was defending. Then Lincoln turned to 
answer these arguments, — with the result 
that for the first time the two litigants under- 
stood the exact facts of both sides, and at 
Lincoln's request settled the case, withdraw- 
ing it from the court. 

This love of the exact truth and of fair 
play and of essential justice shone fi'om the 
man's face, dominated his arguments, ex- 
plained his view-point, revealed his char- 
acter. The nickname, " Honest Old Abe," 
tells the whole story. Lincoln's final judg- 
308 



The Martyred President 

ment partook of the nature of a final decree 
and law. At length his pronouncements 
became like a divine fiat. Take the truth 
out of Lincoln's character, and it would be 
like taking the warmth out of a sunbeam. 
He was truth, he thought truth, loved the 
truth, surrendered himself to the truth. 
Under that influence he refused to play poli- 
tics, or fence for position with Douglas. Once 
Lincoln won a case so easily that he returned 
one-half of the retainer's fee, because he felt 
that he had not earned it. 

Here, therefore, is found the secret of Lin- 
coln's unbounded popularity. The common 
people know their friends, and — what with 
Lincoln's gentleness, his justice, his bound- 
less kindness, his sympathy with the poor 
and the unfortunate, and his honesty — he 
became the most beloved man in the Illinois 
circuit. 

Wonderful, too, his literary achievements. 
His gi'eat passages read like the Bible, and 
have almost the moral authority thereof. 
If preachers ever wear the old Bible out, 
Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and his speech 
at Gettysburg, and certain other passages, 
will furnish texts for another hundred years. 
One thing is certain, — if Chinese students in 
309 



Abraham Lincoln 

their universities two thousand years from 
now translate any oration out of the English 
language, as we now translate the speeches 
of Demosthenes, these Chinese students will 
translate Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg, and 
his Second Inaugural Address. Contrary 
to the usual idea, it may be confidently af- 
firmed that Lincoln was a well equipped 
man, and had the best possible training for 
literary style. During the plastic years of 
memory, Lincoln had thi'ee books to study, 
and two of these are the finest models for style 
in all literature, — King James' \^ersion of the 
Bible, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." 
These are the world's great literary master- 
pieces, these are the wells of English, pure 
and undefiled. Upon these two books Kobert 
Burns was reared. To the fact that his 
mother made him commit to memory forty 
chapters of the Bible before he was seven 
years old, John Kuskin attributed his mastery 
in English style. Second rate men know 
something about everything. Lincoln was a 
first rate man who knew everything about 
some one thing. If you want to make a 
versatile man, turn a boy loose in a library. 
If you want a boy to have the note of dis- 
tinction upon his pages, lock him out of a 
310 



The Martyred President 

library, and send hiin into solitude, with the 
English Bible, with John Bunyan, and with 
^sop's Fables, and let him take these three 
books into his intellect, as he takes meat and 
bread into the rich blood of the physical 
system. 

Literary style is the shadow that the soul 
flings across the page. Style is simply the 
intellect rushing into exhibition and verbal 
form. Therefore style is the balance of 
faculty, s}Tnmetry of development. A man 
is healthy when he does not know that he 
has a single organ in his body, and a page 
has style when you do not know where to 
find the note of distinction. There is a 
world of difference between " style," and *' a 
style." Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugu- 
ral has style. Carlyle's French Kevolution 
has a style. A perfect Kentucky horse has 
style. A knee-sprung horse has a style. 
Down the track comes this perfect horse, 
eyes flashing, head up, neck arched, feet 
dancing, not a flaw, not a blemish, upon leg 
or body. Looking at the glorious creature 
you exclaim, " That horse has style ! " For 
a horse's style is born of perfect health, per- 
fect lungs and perfect legs, one power bal- 
ancing another, and all united to produce 
311 



Abraham Lincoln 

an absolutely perfect horse. Now comes a 
horse that represents a collection of ring- 
bones, and glanders, and poll-evil. The one 
horse limping in front has " a style." Thomas 
Carlyle's sentences are knee-sprung in front 
and his phrases are spavined behind, and, 
therefore, Carlyle has " a style " but not 
" style." You would know one of his sen- 
tences if you saw its skeleton lying in the 
desert on the road to Khartoum. But on 
the other hand, Lincoln has "style," — 
that indescribable bloom and beauty, born 
of balance, development and symmetrical 
growth. Samuel Johnson bulged on the side 
of Latinity. Daniel Webster is an example 
of the magnificent, illustrating gorgeousness, 
opulence, and tropic splendour. Lincoln's 
sentences are like the Bible and Bunyan, — 
they are plate-glass windows through which 
you look to see the jewelled thought be- 
yond. 

Lincoln tells us how he made his style. 
One day he heard a man use the word 
"demonstrate." For days he cudgelled his 
brains to find out just what it was to 
demonstrate a statement. He tells us that 
when he was about eight years old, he began 
to be irritated when men used long words 
312 



The Martyred President 

that he could not understand. He began the 
habit of thinking over in the dark before he 
went to sleep any story he had heard, any 
statement that had been made, and he tried 
to substitute for the long hard words little 
short simple words, that a boy could under- 
stand. During those early years, he learned 
that the rich, racy, homey words are steeped 
and perfumed with beautiful associations. He 
knew that words are fossil poetry. What 
would one not give for the old cloak that 
Paul had from Troas, a piece of the marble 
by Phidias, the old threshold worn by the 
feet of Socrates, an old missal illuminated by 
Bellini, an old note-book in which Shake- 
speare wrote the first outline of Hamlet ! 
And the old, sweet, home words with which 
a mother soothes her babe, with which a lover 
woos his bride, the old words of God, and 
home and native land, are the words that are 
rich in association and in power to move the 
heart. A bird lines its nest with feathers 
plucked from its own breast, and the heart 
steeps the dear, simple speech of home life in 
sacred associations. So Lincoln cut out all 
the long Latin words, and substituted the 
short Saxon ones. Schooled in the two great 
master books that are the precious life spirit 
313 



Abraham Lincoln 

of earth's greatest souls treasured up, he de- 
veloped his style. 

Kor must we overlook the fact that the 
apparent narrowness of his culture represents 
a real concentration that made for richness 
and depth. If one must choose, take the 
upper Khine that is a river deep and pure 
and sweet, and strong for bearing the fleets 
of war and peace because it is confined 
between banks and narrowed. But when the 
Rhine comes down to the flats and approaches 
the sea and casts off all restraints, and tries 
to include everything, it turns into a swamp, 
a morass, losing its power for commerce, and 
becoming a source of disease and death. 
Lincoln's culture was limited to the English, 
and to a mastery of the Constitution — the 
principles of fundamental justice, to one 
country — the Republic, to one topic — the 
Union, and to one reform — Slavery. Beyond 
all doubt, this concentration of study during 
the critical years of his career made up a 
much better preparation than if he had gone 
to a college, studied half a dozen languages, 
and fifty or sixty different subjects, and come 
out Avell smattered, but poorly educated. 
It may be doubted whether Lincoln would 
have been much better off had he been able 
314 



The Martyred President 

to read Latiii and Greek, and speak French 
and German. Many people can say " It is a 
little yello^v dog" in Greek, and German, 
and French, and Italian, and English, but 
after all it is only a little yellow dog. What 
educates is the idea, and not the half dozen 
names of a thing without an idea. 

The important thing about a cistern is 
water, and not many mouths to the pump. 
Having spent many years learning to express 
one idea in five ways, one might be glad to 
trade the five ways of expression for five 
ideas to be expressed in one way. Edward 
Everett, once President of Harvard Uni- 
versity, could talk in five languages, and at 
Gettysburg spoke for two hours. Lincoln 
could speak in one language, and did so 
for two minutes. But the next morning Mr. 
Everett wrote to the President : "I should 
be glad if I could flatter myseK that I came 
as near to the central idea of the occasion in 
two hours as you did in two minutes." Lin- 
coln's one language shames our knowledge 
of four languages, his three books shame 
our libraries, and our four years of college 
culture. 

Nor must we overlook the influence upon 
Lincoln's style of the parables of Jesus 
315 



Abraham Lincoln 

and the fables of ^sop. There are two 
invariable signs of genius in a boy, — one is 
the serious note, and the other is the pio 
ture-making note. All the great things repre- 
sent serious thinking. The greatest artist 
of the last century was the most serious 
one, — Watt, with his Love and Life, and 
Love and Death, and Mammon, and Hope. 
The great poems have been the serious poems, 
the In Memoriam, and the Intimations of 
Immortality, the Hamlet and the Lear. The 
great orators have been the serious orators. 

The next sign of genius is the picture- 
making faculty. Men of talent evolve argu- 
ments, men of genius create emblems, para- 
bles and pictures. Minds oftentimes called 
profound use long abstractions, and are called 
deep thinkers, because nobody can under- 
stand them. But along comes a man of 
genius, and he squeezes the juice out of the 
abstract argument, and flings the rind away, 
and tells you what it is bke. 

Measured in terms of genius, the parables 
of Jesus are the greatest literary achieve- 
ments in history. ^Esop's fables teach by 
pictures. " Pilgrim's Progress " is pictorial. 

Lincoln was exceedingly fortunate in his 
generation in that the three great books of 
316 



The Martyred President 

pictures were in his hands during the im- 
aginative epoch. Of course he was born 
with the talent for parable, because genius 
is one-half nature and the other half nurture. 
It was this natural gift and the trainmg that 
taught hira how when he had completed an 
argument and mastered the prhiciple, to say, 
Now what is this great principle like, and 
how can I condense it into a picture and put 
it in a happy phrase that will sing itself 
across the land? This picture-making gift 
inspired him to quote the keen wisdom of 
that expression of Jesus, " The house divided 
against itself cannot stand." This skill in 
parables gave him the expression, " Better 
not swap horses in the middle of the stream," 
that gave him his second election. This 
vision power gave him that sentence equal 
to anything in Shakespeare, when Yicksburg 
fell, " Once more the Father of Waters goes 
unvexed to the sea." This faculty enabled 
him to sweep into one illustration a thousand 
arguments, so that the people could never 
forget the mother principle that explained 
the facts. 

'Nor may we forget what the great cause 
did for him. The era of the war was a 
great era, because God heaved society as the 
317 



Abraham Lincoln 

winds heave the waves, and men were swept 
forward with irresistible power upon the 
great movement of liberty. Great move- 
ments make great epochs and great men. A 
great ideal of God and righteousness and 
liberty lifts Savonarola and Florence to 
new levels ; a great cathedral inspires 
Michael Angelo's great dome ; a Divine 
Saviour and His transfiguration exalt 
Eaphael ; Paradise explains Dante ; listening 
to the sevenfold Hallelujah chorus of God 
arouses the sweep and majesty of Milton's 
epic ; the woes of three million slaves made 
eloquence possible for Phillips and Beecher. 
The saving of a Union, conceived in liberty 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men 
were created equal, represented a cause into 
which Lincoln could fling himself. The 
thought of meanly losing or nobly saving 
the last, best hope of earth, exalted, trans- 
formed, and armed the men, making fee- 
blings strong, and strong men to be giants. 
Eloquence and heroism wane during the 
commercial era. No man can be eloquent 
upon the duty on hides, or salt, or the dig- 
ging of mud out of a river. But dumb lips 
will break into glorious speech at the thought 
of freeing millions of slaves, and saving free 
3>8 



The Martyred President 

institutions, and handing liberty forward to 
other lands, and to generations yet unborn. 
The era of Fort Sumter and Gettysburg, 
when liberty and slavery were in their death 
grapple, was an era so great that the ordi- 
nary issues of avarice, self-interest, fame, 
luxury, became contemptible, and men were 
exalted to the point where they spake, and 
suffered, and marched, and died, more like 
gods than men. The great battles to be 
fought, the great armies to be moved, the 
great navies to be du'ected, the great orators 
and editors wath whom he counselled, the 
many slaves for whom he became a voice, the 
great days on which he felt that he was mak- 
ing history, the great future into w^hich he 
hoped to send the great liberties unimpaired 
and purified, the great God over all, — lent 
greatness to Abraham Lincoln, clothed him 
with pathos, with sorrow, with dignity and 
majesty, as with garments. 

Like every giant, he was gentle. The 
trul}^ great are always sensitive and sympa- 
thetic. In proportion as the mountain goes 
upward in size does it gain in power to 
return the strong man's shout, or the sigh 
of the lost child, echoing and reechoing the 
cry of need. Sj^mpathy is the soul journey- 
319 



Abraham Lincoln 

ing abroad, to bind up the wounds of him 
who has fallen among thieves. Sympathy 
cannot feast in a palace while the poor fam- 
ish. Selfishness can stop its ears with wax 
lest it hear the groan of the poor, but 
sympathy is knitted in with its kind. Lincoln 
worked as hard to help men as slave masters 
did to recover a fugitive to bondage. It has 
been beautifully said that he did kind deeds 
stealthily, as if he were afraid of being found 
out. He became a shield above the fallen ; 
he stood between the soldier, condemned for 
the sleep of exhaustion, and the hangman's 
noose. He refused to attend a cabinet meet- 
ing because he was trj^ng to find a reason 
for reprieving a soldier. " It is butchery 
day," he said one Friday morning, and he 
denied himself to a committee because he 
did not think that hanging would help the 
boy who was condemned to die. " They 
said he was homely," said a poor woman, 
going away from the White House with a 
reprieve for her son ; " he is the handsomest 
man I ever saw." It is this spnpathy that 
runs through his letter to that mother, 
whose five sons had died gloriously on the 
field of battle. For he squeezed the purple 
clusters of the heart, and let the crimson 
320 



The Martyred President 

tide flow down upon the page, as he prayed 
that the mother might carry through the 
years " only the cherished memory of the 
loved and the lost, and the solemn pride that 
must be yours to have laid so costly a sacri- 
fice upon the altar of freedom." 

More striking still, Lincoln's trust in God 
and His overruling providence. Mr. Hern- 
don in his biography and Dr. Abbott in an 
editorial and an oration at Cooper Institute 
emphasize the agnosticism of Lincoln. The 
one says that in his youth he wrote an article 
against Christianity, and the other that he 
was not a technical Christian. Dr. Abbott 
thinks all this so important that he places the 
agnosticism of Lincoln at the forefront. But 
too much has been made of the schoolboy 
article of Lincoln on doubt and infidelity. 
In his 3^outh Gladstone was a Tory, but he 
outgrew it. In the outset Paul was against 
Christianity. Tennyson and Wordsworth in 
their teens wrote puerile verse, just as Lin- 
coln in his teens wrote a foolish paper. But 
it is cruelly unfair not to allow Abraham 
Lincoln the full benefit of what he came to 
be, and not to take the man at his best. It is 
unfair to say that a man is what he is at his 
worst and lowest point ; a man is what he is at 
321 



Abraham Lincoln 

his best and highest point. Stephen A. Dong- 
las said Lincohi was the most honest man he 
ever knew. Well, if Lincoln was an honest 
man in his character, he mnst have been 
honest in talking about his religion and his 
faith in God. Was Abraham Lincoln an 
agnostic in that hour when he spoke his 
farewell words to his neighbours in Spring- 
field, about starting on the memorable jour- 
ney to his inauguration ? He said : " I feel 
that I cannot succeed without the same divine 
aid that sustained Washington, and on the 
same Almighty Being I place my reliance for 
support ; and I hope you, my friends, will all 
pray that I may receive that divine assistance 
without which I cannot succeed, but with 
which success is certain." Was Abraham 
Lincoln without faith, and did he play to the 
gallery, when he set apart a day of fasting 
and prayer after the defeat at Bull Eun ? 
Having said that Abraham Lincoln was an 
honest man, why not remember it, when 
these critics read his First Inaugural, in 
which he declares that " intelligence, patriot- 
ism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him 
who has never yet forsaken this favoured 
land, are still competent to adjust in the best 
way all our present difficulty." When 
322 



The Martyred President 

Abraham Lincoln wrote the mother, Mrs. 
Bixby, " I pray that the heavenly Father 
may assuage the anguish of your bereave- 
ment," he meant that he believed in God, in 
a God who answered prayer, in a God who 
cared for the mother living, and the five 
brave boys dead. " The Almighty has His 
own purposes," said Lincoln, in the Second 
Inaugural, an address that is steeped in re- 
ligion, that exhales trust in God. Take God 
out of that Second Inaugural, and it would 
be like taking health out of the body, wisdom 
out of the book, sweetness out of the song, 
culture out of the intellect, life out of the 
body. You cannot in one breath say that 
Lincoln was an agnostic, and then in the next 
one say that Lincoln was an honest man. 
I care not one whit what Mr. Herndon says. 
I care everything about what Abraham 
Lincoln says about himself in his greatest 
speeches, in his noblest hours, when he gave 
his countrymen his latest, deepest, profound- 
est thoughts. 

In trying to explain the character of 
Lincoln we therefore make our final appeal 
unto God, for God alone is equal to the mak- 
ing of this great man. TThen long time has 
passed, the name of Lincoln will probably be 
323 



Abraham Lincoln 

mentioned with Moses, Julius Caesar, Paul, 
Shakespeare. Men will read a few of his 
paragraphs as a kind of Bible of Patriotism. 
AVashington's name will not be less, but Lin- 
coln's will certainly be more and more, and 
then still more. God and Sorrow made the 
man great. 

And this is his life story. In the darkest 
hour of the Kepublic, when liberty and slavery 
were struggling to see which should rule the 
old homestead, it became evident that slavery 
would turn the garden into a desert, and the 
house into a ruin. And seeking a deliverer 
and a saviour, the great God, in His own 
purpose, passed by the palace with its silken 
delights. He took a little babe in His arms, 
and called to His side His favourite angel, 
the angel of Sorrow. Stooping, he whispered, 
" Oh, Sorrow, thou well-beloved teacher, take 
thou this little child of Mine and make him 
great. Take him to yonder cabin in the wil- 
derness ; make his home a poor man's house ; 
plant his narrow path thick with thorns, cut 
his little feet with sharp and cruel rocks ; as 
he climbs the hills of difficulty, make each 
footprint red with his own life-blood ; load 
his little back with burdens ; give to him days 
of toil and nights of study and sleeplessness ; 
324 



The Martyred President 

wrest from bis arms whatever he loves ; make 
his heart, through sorrow, as sensitive to the 
sigh of a slave as a thread of silk in a window 
is sensitive to the slightest wind that blows ; 
and when you have digged lines of pain in 
his cheeks, and made his face more marred 
than the face of any man of his tune, 
bring him back to me, and with him I will 
free three million slaves." That is how God 
made Abraham Lincoln great. 

And then, — we slew him. For that is the 
way our ignorant, sinful earth has always 
rewarded its greatest souls. Ours is a world 
where we crucify the Saviour in Jerusalem, 
where we poison Socrates in Athens, where 
we exile Dante in Italy, and burn Savonarola 
in Florence, and starve Cervantes in Madrid, 
and jail Bunyan in Bedford, — for the greatest 
manhood is always rewarded with martyr- 
dom. And what better thing for Abraham 
Lincoln than assassination, because he has 
emancipated three million slaves and saved 
the Union, as the last, best hope of earth ? 

But, lo, who are these in bright array, 
looking over the battlements of heaven, 
while the forces of liberty and slavery in 
other forms struggle together on these earthly 
plains beneath ? These with radiant faces 
325 



Abraham Lincoln 

unstained by tears, that seem never to have 
known the mark of pain or sorrow ? Ah ! 
these are they who have come out of great 
tribulation, anguish and martyrdom ; Paul 
from the stones ; Homer from his blindness ; 
Socrates from his cup of poison ; Milton 
from his heart-break ; Savonarola from his 
fagots, and Lincoln from his long martyrdom 
— the least part of which was the shot that 
freed his spirit in the hour of triumph and 



326 



Ind 



ex 



Abolition Societies in the 

South, 25 
Abominations, tariff of, 50, 

/Esop's Fables, 290, 297, 316 
«• Adam Bede," 148 
Adams, Charles F,, 54, 243 
Adams, John, 83, 1 21 
Alabama, secession, 189 
Alabama, the, 225, 238, 245 
Albemarle, the, 245 
Albert, Prince Consort, 226 
Alderscn, Judge, 107 
Alva, Duke of, 15, 264 
American Tract Society, 296 
Ames, Fisher, 213 
Andersonville, 269, 270 
Anne, Queen, 18 
Anti-Slavery epoch, im- 
portance of, 6, 7, 13 
Arab slave-hunters, 30 
Athens, 14, 41, 212 
Atlanta and Sherman, 249 
Austin, James T,, 81 

Bach, John S., 301 

Bacon, Lord, 1 10 

Bailey, Kentucky editor, 140 

Bancroft, George, 104, 282 

Bates, Edward, 184 

Beauregard, P. G. T., 192, 
244 

Beecher, Henry \Vard, 49, 
69, 91, 181, 204 ; Chap- 
ter IX, The Appeal to 
England, 2 1 2-241 ; rea- 



sons for European trip of, 
214-216; no official em- 
bassy, 217 ; interview of, 
with Lincoln, 218 ; break- 
fast to, in London, 219; 
speech at Manchester, 
227-230 ; at Glasgow 
and Edinburgh, 231, 232; 
in Liverpool, 232, 234 ; 
in London, 235 ; triumph 
at home, 235, 239 ; raises 
Sumter flag, 241 ; and Lin- 
coln, 212, 218, 304-305 
Beecher, Lyman, 138 
Bell, John, 184 
Bishop of New Jersey, 296 
Bowen, Henry C, 181 
Breckenridge, J. C, 184 
Bremer, Frederika, 144 
Bright, John, 222, 225 
Brown, John, Chapter VI, 
136-159; in Springfield, 
149; North Elba, 150; 
Iowa, 150; Kansas, 151- 
154; Virginia, 154; Har- 
per's Ferry, 155 ; trial 
and death, 1 55-158 ; his 
fanaticism overruled, 159 
Brown-Sequard, Dr., 114 
Bryant, Wm. C, 182 
Buchanan, Com. Franklin, 

245 
Buchanan, James, 189 
Buckle, Thomas, 204 
Bunyan, John, 325 
Burns, Anthony, 84-87 



327 



Index 



Burns, Robert, 310 
Burnside, Gen. A. E., 252 
Byron, Lord, 84 

Calhoun, John C, 12 ; 
early career, 46, 47 ; nul- 
lification, 51 ; government 
and sovereignty, 52; mis- 
takes of, 59 ; influence 
on non-slave liolding 
South, 196 ; political doc- 
trine of, in church affairs, 
204-205 

Carlisle, Lord, 144 

Carlyle, Thomas, 100, 107, 
236-238, 31 1-3 1 2 

Carpet-baggers, 259 

Cervantes, 325 

Channing, Wm. E., 74, 75, 
81, 104 

Charles I, 23, 42 

Charles II, 23 

Chase, Salmon P., 141 

Christian Commission, 272 

Clay, Henry, 52, 61, 2S9 

Cobden, Richard, 222, 238 

Columbus, Christopher, 291 

Columbus, Ky., 253 

Congregationalism and State 
sovereignty, 204-205 

Constitution, the, 206 

Convention of 1776, 23 

Cooper, Peter, 182 

Cotton, 26-29, 49, 222-224 

Gushing, Lieut. VV. B., 245 

Dante, 95, 251, 290, 318, 

325 
Darwin, Charles, 291, 301 
Davis, Jefferson, Stepliens' 
opinion of, 203; early ca- 
reer, 206 ; as Confederate 
president, 206 



De Bau on slave trade, 20 
Declaration of Independ- 
ence, 25 
Demetrius, 87 
Democracy, advance of, 5 
Demosthenes, 14, 213 
Dickens, Charles, novels of 
reform, 139; praises 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
143 ; predicts Confeder- 
ate success, 238 
Donelson, Fort, 246 
Douglass, Frederick, 34 
Douglas, Stephen A., as 
orator, 69 ; early career, 
165-166 ; supports Polk, 
167 ; proposes " squatter 
sovereignty," 169 ; loses 
prestige, 170-172; chal- 
lenged to debate by Lin- 
coln, 173; compared with 
Lincoln, 174- 177 ; the 
great debate, 178-181 ; 
nominated for presidency, 
184; supports Union, 
185; death, 185-, and 
Northern Democrats in 
1861, 193 
Dutch revolt, 264 
Dwight, President Yale Col- 
lege, 46 
Dyer, Oliver, 48 

Edwards, Jonathan, 21 
Eliot, George, 146, 148 
England, 26, 49 ; source of 
American principles, 218 ; 
as to wars, 220 ; why fa- 
vourable to South, 221- 
224 ; non-voters of, fa- 
voured North, 225 ; 
Beccherin, 218-221,227- 
235, 239-241 



328 



Index 



English Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 227 

Emerson, Ralph W., 68, 96, 
236, 285 

Everett, Edward, 69, 106, 

315 
Ewell, Gen. Richard S., 245 

Faneuil Hall, 81, 85 
Farragut, Admiral David, 

196, 246-247 
Fillmore, Millard, loi 
Florida, secession, 189 
Floyd, John B., 1S9 
Foote, Admiral Andrew H,, 

246 
Fort Fisher, 247 
Forts Donelson and Henry, 

246 
Fort Sumter, 191, 208, 241 
Franklin, Benjamin, 34 
Fremont, Gen. J. C, 215, 246 
Fugitive Slave legislation, 

36, 87, 214 
Fulton Street prayer-meet- 
ing, 162 

Garrison, \Vm. Lloyd and 
W. Phillips, Chapter HI, 
68-94 > the pen for aboli- 
tion, 68 ; early career, 
69 ; begins agitation with 
Lundy, 70; starts Liber- 
ator, 1 83 1, 71 ; accused 
of Turner uprising, 72 ; 
organized American Anti- 
Slavery Society, 74 ; 
mobbed in Boston, 76 ; 
satisfied with Lincoln's 
emancipation, 93 

Geneva Arbitration, 225 

George III, 24 

Gladstone, W, E., 225 



Gordon, Gen. J. B., 271, 

285-286 
Government contracts, 282- 

Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., 246, 
248; early career, 252; 
rapid promotion, 253 ; 
Columbus, Donelson and 
Vicksburg, 254 ; military 
genius, 255 ; final cam- 
paign, 256 ; Appomattox, 
257-258 ; President, 259 ; 
political and financial 
problems, 259-260 ; un- 
wise speculation, 261 ; au- 
thorship, 261 ; character 
and death, 261-262 
Great men, era of, 292-293 
Great Rebellion, the, 11- 

13 ; war of the, 265 
Greeley, Horace, 54, 182, 
183; Chapter V, 117- 
135; early career, 122- 
1 26 ; founds A'. Y. Trib- 
une, 126; extremist as 
reformer, 129; "On to 
Richmond," 129; evokes 
Lincoln letter, 130; peace 
commissioner, 131 ; draft 
riots, 131 ; bails Davis, 
132 ; Democratic pres- 
idential candidate, 133; 
dies, 134-135; and Lin- 
coln, 299, 305 
Greenback craze, 260 
Greene, Mrs. Nathanael, 27 
Grinnell, James B., 150 
Grote, George, 107 

Hallfxk, Gen. H. W., 253 
Hampden, John, 42, 83 
Hancock, John, 83 
Hastings, Warren, 213 



329 



Index 



Hay, John, 2i8 

Hayne, Robert Y., 41, 51, 

56, 163 
Ilayti, 69 

Heine, Heinrich; 144 
Helper, Hinton Rowan, 197 
Helps, Arthur, 144 
Henry, Fort, 246 
Henry, Patrick, 68, 191,213 
Hessian troops, 268 
Higginson, T. W., 85 
Hill, Frederic T., 242 
Hill, Gen. A. P., 245 
Hill, Gen. D. H., 245 
Holland, 15, 41, 264 
Homer, 326 

Hooker, Gen. Joseph, 251 
Howe, Dr. Samuel G., 104 

«• Imitation of Christ, 

The," 143 
" Impending Crisis, The," 

197 
Irving, Washington, 74 

Jackson, Andrew, 293 

Jackson, Thomas J. (Stone- 
wall), 200-202, 244, 245, 
268 

Jamestown, Va,, 17 

Japanese sanitation in war, 
272 

Jefferson, Thomas, 20, 24, 

25. 53. 191 
Jeffrey, Lord, 107 
Jesus, parables of, 315 ; mar- 
tyrdom of, 325 
Johnson, Samuel, 312 
Johnston, Gen. A. S., 244 
Johnston, Gen. J. E., 242 

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 
88, 169, 172 



A'earsarge, the, 246 
Kemble, Fanny, 32 
Kenesaw Mountain, 242 
Kentucky, 196 
Kingsley, Charles, 144 

Laud, Archbishop, 42 

Lawless, Judge, 79 

Lee, Robert E,, honour to 
Virginia, 194 : early ca- 
reer, 199 ; as strategist, 
244; final campaign 
against Grant, 256 ; Ap- 
pomattox, 257-25S; 
quoted, 2S5-286 

Liberator, the, 71-73 

Lincoln, Abraham, new 
force, 163 ; challenges 
Douglas to debate, 173; 
compared with Douglas, 
174-176; "divided-house 
speech," 177; the great 
debate, 177-180; Cooper 
Institute speech, 181- 
183; presidential nom- 
ination, 183 ; election and 
inauguration, 1 86- 187; 
inaugural address, 190; 
calls for 75,000 troops, 
193 5 applauds Beecher, 
212; interview with 
Beecher, 218; quoted, 
286-287 ; the Martyred 
President, Chapter XII, 
288-326 ; Americanism, 
2S8-289 ; three books, 
290; career, in brief, 
296-298 ; opposes Sew- 
ard, Stanton and Greeley, 
299; ancestry, 300-303; 
opposes Phillips, Greeley 
and Beeclier, 304-306 ; 
honesty, 307-308; liter- 



330 



Index 



ary style, 309-315; con- 
centrated culture, 314- 
315; with Everett at 
Gettysburg, 315; made 
great by great events, 
317-318; characteristics, 
319-320; religious faith, 
321-323; death, 325 

Lincoln and Douglas, the 
Great Debate, Chapter 
VII, 159-186 

London, 16, 18, 235 

Lo^ Cabi7i, the, 125 

Longfellow, H. W., 104, 

273 

Longstreet, Gen. James, 244 

Loring, U. S, Commissioner, 
84 

Louisiana, secession, 189 

Lovejoy, Rev. E. P., mur- 
der of, 78-So 

Lowell, James R., 94, 99- 
102, 282, 2S4 

Lundy, Benjamin, 69-70 

Luther, Martin, 115 

Macaulay, T. B., 107, 280 
McClellan, Gen. G. B., 250- 

252 
Machiavelli, 307 
McKinley, William, 289 
Mammonism, 6 
Mann, Horace, 63, 106 
Mansfield, Lord, 24 
Marshall, Thomas, 46 
Martineau, Harriet, 113 
Mason, James M., 225 
Medill, Joseph, 179 
Merrimac, the, 245 
Mexican War, 167, 252 
Michael Angelo, 318 
Milton, John, 16, 93, 318, 

326 



Mississippi, secession, 189 
Missouri Compromise, 169 
Mobile Bay, 247 
Mo/iitor, the, 245 
iMorton, Governor of In- 
diana, 273 
Moses, 36 
Motley, John L., 75, 96 

Napoleon, 242 
National Era, the, 143 
Negro, as faithful servant, as 
soldier, 259-260; as 
voter, 281 
New Orleans taken, 247 
Newspapers, in 1 861- 1865, 

118, 119 
Newton, Isaac, 291 
New Yorker ^ the, 125 
AVtc York Tribune, 126- 

128 
Northern ofikers of South- 
ern birth, 196 
Northern resources, 274- 

279 
NuUihcation, 51, 54 
Nurses, 272-274 

Otis, James, 83 

Palestine, 41 
Panic of 1857, 160-161 
Parke, Judge, 107 
Parker, Theodore, 84, 85 
Parliament House of Peace, 

no 
Paul, the Apostle, 326 
Penn, William, 22 
People at Home during the 

war. Chapter XI, 263- 

287 
Philip of Macedon, 15, 213 
Philip of Spain, 15 



331 



Index 



Phillips, Wendell, 63; 
Chapter III, 68-94 ; early 
career, 75 ; aroused by 
mobbing of Garrison, 76; 
Lovejoy's murder, 78 ; 
Faneuil Hall meeting, 
81-83; Burns' rescue 
party, 85, 86; agitation 
against Fugitive Slave 
Law, 87, 88; Phillips' 
lecturing, 89 ; oratory, 
90 ; detiance of mobs, 91- 
92 ; influence, 93 ; Low- 
ell's poem, 94 ; quoted, 
285 

" Pilgrim's Progress, The," 

143 
Plymouth Church, 91, 163, 

i8i, 204, 218, 235 
Plymouth Rock, 17 
Popular sovereignty, 170 
Porter, Admiral D. D., 247 
Port Hudson, 247 
Portuguese slave-traders, 19 
Postal affairs, during Revo- 
lution, 120; in Jackson's 
time, 121 
Presbyterianism and Federal 

government, 205 
Prescott, Wm. H., 96, 106 
Prison-ship martyrs, 264 
Prison sufferings, 269-271 
Pym, John, 42 

quincy, josiah, 53, 83, 213 

Randolph, John, 32 

Raphael, 318 

Religious sentiment in- 
creased, 284 

Revival of religion in 1857, 
161-162 

Rhodes, J. F., 60, 162, 202 



'< Romola," 146 
Ruskin, John, 310 
Russo-Japanese War, 210 

Sand, George, 144 

Sanitary Commission, Chris- 
tian Commission, 272 

Savonarola, 325-326 

Scheffer, Ary, and Christ 
the Emancipator, 296 

Scott, Winheld, 196 

Secession, first threatened 
by Massachusetts, 52, 53; 
reasons for. Chapter VIH, 
188-21 1; of South Car- 
olina and other States, 
189 ; why not accepted by 
North, 207-209 ; early 
rebellions of, 294-295 

Semmes, Com, Raphael, 245 

Seward, Wm. H., 128, 183, 
184, 217, 299 

Shaftesbury, Lord, 144, 145 

Shays' rebellion, 293 

Shenandoah Valley, 250 

Sheridan, Gen. Philip, 248, 
250 

Sherman, Gen. W. T., 242, 
248-249 

Slavery, American, Chapter 
I, 1 1-39 ; Calhoun's view 
of, 55 ; controlled govern- 
ment in i860, 188; at- 
tacked by North Car- 
olinian, 196 ; destroyed 
vigour of South, 210; to 
be paid for by war, 287 

Slave-trade begins, 17 

Slidell, John, 225 

Smith, Sidney, 107 

Socrates, 263, 301 

South Carolina, and the 
tariff, 50 ; nuHification 



332 



Index 



doctrine of, 51; attacked 
Sumter, 191 
Southern destitution, 267 
Southern officers of North- 
ern birth, 195 
Southern resources, 279, 280 
Southern women, 266-268, 

281 
Spanish slave-traders, 19 
" Squatter sovereignty," 169 
Stanton, Edwin M., 235, 

240, 299 
Stead, William, 99 
Stephens, Alexander H., 
201 ; opposes secession, 
202 ; Confederate vice- 
president, 203 ; opinion 
of Davis, 203 
Story, Joseph, 75, 104 
Stowe, Calvin E., 139 
Stowe, Charles E., 139 
Stowe, Harriet lieecher. 
Chapter VI, 136-148; 
daughter of Lyman 
Beecher, 138; married, 
lived in Cincinnati, 139 ; 
wrote death of " Uncle 
Tom," 141 ; " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin," 143- 148 
Stowe, Lyman Beecher, 139 
Stradivarius, 301 
Sumner, Charles, 54, 75 ; 
Chapter IV, 95- 116; suc- 
ceeds Webster in United 
States Senate, 102 ; early 
career, 104- 1 10 ; oration 
on war, 107-109; boldly 
attacks slavery, I lo-i 13 ; 
beaten by Brooks, 113; 
characterization, 1 14-116 
Surgeons, 272-274 



Taney, Roger B., 186 



Tariff, the, 48-50 
Texas, secession, 189 
Thackeray, W. M,, 148 
Thomas, Gen. G. H., 196, 

248 
Times t the London, 230 
Tombs, Robert, 137 
Trent, the, 225 
Tribune Alniaitac, 128 
Tribune, The New York^ 

126-128 
Tribune reporter and John 

Brown, 153 
Turner, Nat, 34 

" Uncle Tom," death of, 

141 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," 143- 

148 

«« Vanity Fair," 148 

Van Zandt, frees slaves, 

140 
Vaughan, Judge, 107 
Vicksburg, 247 
Victoria, Queen, 146, 226 

War, good and evil influ- 
ence of the, 281-285 
Washburne, E. B,, 179 
Washington, George, 24, 
191 ; contrast with Lin- 
coln, 288-289 
Watt, James, no, 291 
Webster and Calhoun, Chap- 
ter II, 40-67 
Webster, Daniel, 12; early 
career, 44, 45 ; answers 
Ilayne, 56-58 ; answers 
Calhoun, 6oj 61 ; 7th of 
March speech, 61-63 ; 
Lincoln approves, 64 ; 



333 



Index 



Webster dies, 66; as or- 
ator, 69, 164, 292 ; ban- 
ner of, 295 
Wellington, 242 
Whiskey rebellion, 293 
Whitefield, George, 21 
Whitney, Eli, 27-29, 45 
Whittier, John G., 63, 69, 

96, 106, 285 
Winchester and Sheridan, 
250 



Winslow, Admiral John A., 

246 
Winthrop, Robert, 273 
Wirtz, Henry, 270 
Wise, Governor of Virginia, 

155-156 
Worden, Admiral John L., 

245 
Wordsworth, Wm., 107 

Xenophon, 264 



627 ^ 



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